jueves, abril 27, 2006

Steal this blog

"Hey Honey!" the blond lady calls in her voice, rough from years of cigarette smoking. She leans out the window of the passenger side of the late 70's sports car, brand unplaceable. "How far is Lompoc from here?" she asks.

I take the scene in, called back from my contemplation of the sea just after dusk. I shouldn't have parked at this overlook, I think, it says "No Parking Sunset to Sunrise." If there is still a little daylight, it isn't really sunset, is it?

"I don't really know," I apologize, the man whose frizzy blond beard and kinky hair tell me immediately he is a hippie throwback, looks back over his shoulder at her, and shakes his head.
"Come on," she cajoles. To me, "It isn't far, is it?"

"I don't know, 20 to 30 minutes maybe?" I guess and calmly look back over the sea.
"See?" she reiterates to her reticent companion. She wants him to go with her to look at her new house.
There is a light smell of tobacco and a large black truck sits to my left, windows cracked and voices and radio commingle. The ocean is a limpid grey like the color of my beloved cat, smooth, like the edge of a gurney, but the edges blend into nothingness. Across the water she claims that there is a sailboat, and asks him why he can't see it. He says it is an oil rig. In my head I agree with him. I don't see a sailboat either. There are no waves and I look down on the houses of the privileged few, the multimillionaire homes with perfectly manicured grass, intricate tile patterns on the roof, garden verandahs. I think of Carey's house on Cape Ann.

"Is that Campus Point?" he speaks 10 feet across the thick fog air. I keep my chin up, shoulders back, relaxed. "I don't know. "Maybe. I don't come here much."
"Oh?"
"I usually don't drive."
"You let someone else drive you," the woman interjects, playfully tilting her head out the window like a teenage girl, not at all like the 45 year-old woman that she must be. "You ever been to Chumash Casino?"
"No, well once, I mean, I drove by it once. No, I just ride my bike to work."
"I think it is campus point. I went to UCSB... graduated from there," he continues his speculation.
"Where's that?" she asks me.
I am suddenly keenly aware of the ten feet between us. The black truck has gone. Why am I giving them any information at all?
"Are you good with computers?" the Abby Hoffman look-alike asks.
I get uneasy, why oh why oh why am I trained to be polite? I start to imagine him as a Charles Manson double, his partner in crime playing the ditzy artist. I review the contents of my stomach, oh God, I shouldn't have eaten at the Habit, I envision the analysis of my stomach contents when they pull my lifeless body from the ditch.
"Not so much."
"Can you look up the **** you can see it's a collection of all kinds of prophecies."He babbles on about prophesies, George Washington's prophetic vision.
"When do the students start dumping their stuff over there?" she asks.
"In June." I try hard to keep everything within the realm of normalcy. Freud's Uncanny pops into my mind.
"They've changed things over there, huh? They have new bins for the stuff. I've gotten all kinds of stuff the students leave behind, televisions, computers..."
"The benefits of conspicuous consumption." I comment wryly.
"The catalogue is only $5, I bet it'd be really interesting reading."
"Right on," I hedge, nodding slightly, not moving, but flitting my eyes across the horizon, I could throw myself into the bramble over the cliff and catch myself before falling to my death, I think, I can't run down the hill, it is totally isolated. It is getting dark. What do I do?
"It's all gonna be over in 2 and a half years," he gleefully insists, "We're going to go to war with China over Taiwan."
"Guess we better live a good two and a half years then," I laugh, nervously, but hiding it well.
"You're from the East Coast," he states.
"Couldn't you tell?"
"Yes, you don't fit here, that's why I asked."
"She's from the East Coast!" he calls enthusiastically to his partner-in-crime. "You're the second girl we met today from there. The other was in Montecito."
"Right on." perfect verbal fodder. I offer nothing, I mark no visible linguistic distance, and yet, I concede to nothing. Cortazar has a wonderful essay about victims being complicit in the crime against them, walking down the dark alley, and resisting the urge to bolt because of decorum, politenes, God this is stupid, I need to get out of here, the darkness is almost complete.
"I made a flyer, all by myself."
"Nice." I begin to edge farther away. He doesn't move, if he does I'll bolt.
"I'm gonna go over and hand out thousands of them, I just ran out. Too bad, I'd give you one."
"No worries," I try to be as noncommittal and nonchalant as possible. I could run, I could run. Run where? Nowhere. The woman isn't interjecting her commentary, what if she's the one who binds the victims? What is wrong with me? I have read too many crime novels, but this is creepy. Creepy. I need to go. Now.
"Well," I say, as I wrap my hand tightly around my keys, brandishing them as secret weapons against this unnamed assailant, who isn't. The talk on Lacan comes back to me, the strangeness, the idea that a completely known situation can suddenly become strange, and this realization of disconcert is what makes us uneasy, it makes manifest our lack, "I'm gonna get going. Good luck." I say over my shoulder, as an afterthought, never fully turning my back as I walk across the street.
"To you too," he calls, never unfriendly, but the wild eyed look and talk about prophesy is enough to frighten me, there are plenty of perfectly nice madmen whose personal god tells them that they need nice young women to sacrifice. Images of the slack-breasted skins of flayed women that the Aztec priests donned in ritual war festivals that we were discussing just this afternoon fill my thoughts. My head feels light, like yesterday. I can get to my car and lock the door. If I lock the door I can get out of here, but it is a sharp curve, and I don't know what is up the hill, maybe a dead end. I can't afford a dead end. Better go back down, to civilization. "God bless you." Words that fall like steel rain. I have heard those words before. They always send a shiver down my spine.
I stride confidently across the pavement and sit quickly in the driver's seat, pushing the lock with my elbow and automatically locking all the doors. He calls and makes a motion for me to stop, acts like he is going to come towards me as he pulls at his back door. I ignore it, turn over the ignition, rev the engine and pretend that we haven't spoken. The spell of politeness has snapped, I don't have to be polite anymore, I am back in my car, my own space. I pull a hard U. I love my tight steering radius. They are left behind, the white car with black windows. I go a little too quickly down the hill, but I am back by the beach and then back near the highway. They are not behind me, I check several times. I resist the urge to call for comfort, there is no comfort anymore. I am going home to an empty house. Going home, going home alive.

Urban decay


Urban decay
Originally uploaded by lunita.

Infinite possibility in windows and doors. Through the looking glass. What is on the other side. Are those doors really shut forever? I wonder. Some doors will never fully close, even with slack aging skin and bodies twisted in anguished pain.

A matter of perspective


A matter of perspective
Originally uploaded by lunita.

I love this angle, I don't know why. I feel like a Lilliputian for some strange reason. Sigh. Colonial architecture.

Monte Alban


Monte Alban
Originally uploaded by lunita.

Dreaming of greener pastures. Vile procrastination technique. Gah. Must write paper by 2 pm.

Unlikely story


Unlikely story
Originally uploaded by lunita.

Here is a story that I have told (elsewhere) and may indeed share (here). Don't mind the phallocentric framing. This is really all about girl power :)

viernes, abril 21, 2006

Mea lista mea lista...

Things done:
1)Paid taxes: check. (ugh. big check. Don't want to think about this.)
2)Got scholarship confirmed, bought tickets for Portugal/ Madrid: End of June to middle of August. (oh no, I don't know if I can bear being away from my baby for so long, but... here goes nothing, raise a glass to self-forged independence)
3)Bought and built (ok, mom bought for me) the mosaic table that I have wanted since moving to a place where outdoor breakfasts are possible.
4) Read books (not enough, going back for more)
5) Got work accomplished for class (how? must have been a miracle, but it swings its wild arms down at me once again this week)
6) Translated a survey for professor in the education department. (I know I shouldn't take on work, but translating is so easy and fun it is like taking candy from a baby, ok, wrong metaphor, babies like candy a good deal more than one would think, and for a five page survey, over $300 for a little over an hour of work seems silly to pass up, especially when tix to Europe in summer are wicked expensive!)
7) Failed Jenny miserably in her last minute dissertation sprint, ok, not miserably, and the excuse was...
8) Went to the doctor, finally, and sadly will now have to undergo a slew of pricking and prodding and peeing excercise, (including ultrasound - bleh) but perhaps may be closer to an answer?? Who knows.
9) Found out about a bilingual school in the area to which I may send the girl-child, after I visit with the principal, that is.

Still to go:
One large looming exam.

Still large.

Still looming.

One book closer.

Many trivial details slipping through the sieve that is my brain. Daily. Ugh. Must end this misery. Must end. Must...

martes, abril 18, 2006

Colors of the day

Today tastes of jasmine and green tea,
secret places that no one else knows.
Musty books on benches in the sun
salt, licked from the skin.

Today smells of cut grass,
and tennis balls and milkweed,
and the endless springs of
possibility.

It sounds of cicadas and
chirping frogs in the mist
and whirring whispers
through the tall grass,
me, belly pressed against the
moist earth.

It feels of absence.
His absence.
I remember it just like the rest,
forever,
from ever,
it is not a new feeling,
and yet, it is.

She's gone...

Dropped at the AirBus this morning with her Bubbeh. She smiled her toothy grin, she slept in my arms for the last time, her teeth and hair shiny, just how she likes it. Now it is upon me. To do what I said I would. To work as if there is no tomorrow, no yesterday, only today, only today.

It has been less than an hour. Empty. We took her for Indian food last night. She had her favorite meal. What am I going to do without her? What will I be? It is only three weeks, not even, I have so much work to finish, so much, but I want to cry, and be comforted. I will be, I know, soon.

It will be good for her to have some independence from her mommy, she hasn't been away from me for more than three nights, ever. It will be ok. I will be ok. And yet, there are so many things, so many that don't make any sense without her, that don't make any sense at all. How can your heart be torn in so many directions? How can one feeling not negate the others? Not consume them like cotton spread thin between the fingers and lit on fire, the flame turning solid into liquid into gas. Why don't feelings evanesce into a plasma state, and take their leave? But the food for their fire is other, and it is inconsumable, inconceivable its disappearance.

viernes, abril 14, 2006

stupid question

Ok. I know this is a stupid question, and that there is no real answer, but I have to ask it anyway. Why is it ok for this country to threaten use of nuclear (or other) force to demand compliance of any other country not to develop its own nuclear arms program, i.e. to protect itself?

Granted, I don't believe that anybody should be killing anyone, and much less on a wide scale whose ecological ramifications are innumerable, irreversible and eternal. But wasn't there something somewhere written about leading by example? What right does the U.S. have to "punish" the rest of the world? (and here I am not limiting myself to questions of nuclear contamination but also of our massive overconsumption of petrochemicals). And why shouldn't others be allowed to protect themselves against imminent danger (Halliburton trucks just waiting to rumble across the desert).

God knows it is far more complex than my simple mind can grasp, but shouldn't we, every so often, try to look at things simply? For a regime who claims moral authority... they might want to brush up on the Bible, for starters (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's... oil).

morning sickness

It may be too early in the day for heavy drinking, but something needed to be done. I can't seem to make myself start even though I have a pile of plays to read and another few tomes of poetry, Latin American Romanticism and the transition to Modernismo.

I refuse to feel bad about adding vodka to my morning juice. Well actually, the funny thing is that I never drink juice, except when combined with alcohol, so when I reached for the cranberry juice, there was something of a pavlovian bell that triggered my reaching for the freezer as well.

So work. I must do it. I also must do my taxes. Today. Even though I officially have until Monday because the 15th falls on the weekend. First a play. Or two. Then taxes. Then another play or two. Then. What? I already cleaned the kitchen, picked up I.'s forgotten back pack and glossed through a history of Spanish literature, just to see that I still have review material waiting for the last weeks, I left a recipe suggestion on a friend's blog, and pulled chicken out of the freezer for supper. I have whole mushrooms and a bottle of cheap red wine that I opened the other night to make Charoset for the seder. I think I will make coq au vin. While trying to observe the food prohibitions. Don't ask me why. (Vodka is kosher, in my book). It isn't about any real belief in a system, or anything remotely spiritual (I wish it were, but I have been permanently ruined by my hyper-critical view of the world), perhaps a vague connection to "culture" whatever that is. Part of it, I suppose, is wanting to share something with my daughter that I have fond memories of as a child. Mostly it is that, I think, but then why did I walk all the way across campus for a salad so that I could pick the ingredients that I wanted yesterday? There it gets more complex. I think I like control, and I like setting goals for myself that I can acheive, while causing myself mild discomfort. Yes, perhaps it is that. I prohibit myself from something I want, or need, or think I need and I force myself to stick with the program. Perhaps it is just a "why not?" sort of a thing. I don't know, I don't claim to know the inner workings of my (albeit partially deformed) psyche. But needless to say, I need to focus on something concrete, and food is as concrete as it gets.

It is still morning and I am still procrastinating, and I just wrote a story about when K. and I were travelling in Oaxaca and I was pregnant and very sick, and we ran into J. at Monte Alban, but I want to figure out the scanner in my house and see if I can upload the pictures, and I really don't think I need to be wasting my time on that, but I want to. And this afternoon there is an opening, a friends MFA thesis exhibit. Perhaps I will go, but only if, only if, only if, I read at least 4 books before that. Yes. I will there it is, a dangling carrot.

Ok. Back to work.

lunes, abril 10, 2006

Disparates

What do Antonio Gramsci, José Enrique Rodó, Rómulo Gallegos, Javier Marías, Leopoldo Lugones, Ricardo Palma, Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Mariano Azuela and José Asunción Silva all have in common other than the fact that they are (were) all men?

They are all (or at least their biblio-avatars) sitting neatly, semi-dispatched on the dehumidifier that is acting as a provisional nightstand while the real one has been displaced in anxious wait for a new door frame. The rains are wreaking havoc on the wooden structures, and the visiting carpenter tells me that the floors should be fine, that the asbestos doesn't really need to be abated, not if the tiles are structurally sound, which he assumes they will be, though one can't be sure.

Arg.

I. leaves in a week and that both relaxes me and scares the bejeezus out of me. It has come. The last three week mad dash to preparation is upon me, and while most of the aforementioned authors are waiting only to be jotted down in the annals of spiral notebook-dom, I find myself lolling in anguished misery as I try to read 200 pages about the Gramscian concept of culture for the one class I am taking. I have been teaching and hightailing it off campus, and I finally finally put the nice soft new thousand-count sheets on my bed. Why have I been depriving myself? Why, I ask!

I seem to have the look of the possessed about me, though my wardrobe renovation has caused quite a stir, the only interactions that I have are with professors either asking me how I am doing and if I am ready, or to tell me how great I look, which just goes to show how utterly un-put together and frumpy I normally look, or was looking. It is more of an attitude readjustment, I think. Or perhaps a physiological change based on recent interaction? Could be that, certainly could.

Meanwhile every single one of my neighbor/friends and all of I.'s are slowly shuffling off one by one into the abyss and we will soon be left with the friendless emptiness that is settling over me. I don't even want to think about how much I will miss K. and our afternoon vice-fests and dance parties. When they came for the last of their things last night we both nearly cried, even though she is only, for now, going to be on the other side of town. Everything is moving towards its inevitable end, and I have this strange sense of emptiness, not the exciting promise of possibility, but this lump in my stomach, of impending doom. Sigh.

Forgive me dear readers, I know you are still out there, though you rarely speak any more, I have no useful, witty insight to offer and will likely be equally tongue-tied and boring for the weeks to come. I know it matters very little to anyone, least of all to me, but it seems that this tack of work avoidance may have ultimately dried up, or at least, is in a state of temporary if extended drought.

miércoles, abril 05, 2006

veggietable update

Tonight we managed both broccoli and mushrooms (she was convinced that she liked them in stroganoff) and I did nothing, nothing, nothing all afternoon. Well, nothing me related, but sometimes it is just that way. I fell off the novel wagon, but there are still a few hours left in the night to read a few short stories and at least nominally dispatch my daily book.

K. is moving. I don't think I know what to do with myself, beyond inheriting, on a trial basis, a slew of plants and a more permanent basis, certain pots and pans, including a pressure cooker (I will have to resume legume use) and a beautiful hand-crafted copper plate from outside Patzcuaro, that I will have to mount on my wall, but am relatively inept, manlessly. I say that, but I am quite sure that if and when I actually get around to it, I will go buy a wall mount and be just fine weilding a hammer. I always loved woodworking, I may reinsert myself into the world of carpentry one of these days, when at least one degree is flailing behind me still stupified by its brazen defeat. B. is moving too, and J. needed help last night on the last 4 chapters of her dissertation, theoretically due today. I am still up and waiting for tonight's drafts. No one ever calls me. Not really, and if they do, it is usually to see if I need help, so of course I feel terrible when the one night that my phone manages to turn itself off unbeknownst to me I get not one, but several calls for help. I feel like a bad friend.

But today I made up for it by being moral support as K. got her keys and we checked out her new place, envisioned furniture arrangement, and lunched on vietnamese food. When we got back, I whipped her kitchen into a boxing frenzy and we were finished packing it all up in about an hour, at which point we indulged in a stiff drink. Ok. I had the stiff drink, I am beginning to aquire a frightfully pleasant taste for vodka, and seeing as all she had else to offer (not being a wine drinker) was beer, what could I really say? She sent me home with a few odds and ends, several new pairs of earings, a flask of cachaça, a serrated bread knife (I have been meaning to buy one) and no desire to do work. Instead I talked to Jenny, assuaged my guilt about being unavailable last night and finally did take a few pages of notes. Not enough, but whatever.

I. was wonderful and since the rain cleared up, I took her out for the treat that was promised two days ago, I swung by the liquor store for more boxes and dropped them off with paper bags at K.'s door, and stopped in on my other departing neighbor B. who is juggling two men and two kids and a new job and a downsized apartment. I sure am going to miss having readily available company. I guess it is just in time for me to cloister myself in a frenzied sprint to the finish line, and yet, the panic has not set in. I feel amazingly serene, and poised, I believe this may well be what they call denial, but I'll take it. I. listened, and ate up her whole dinner, and drank her milk, and showered with me before brushing her teeth, and ticked off the reasons one by one that it was more important to have love and good nutrition and someone to read good books to you than to receive presents, and I smiled because, of course she is parroting me, and I couldn't be prouder if I tried. So we read the chapter and she said that she is getting to be a bigger girl now, and will try to sleep on the other side of the bed as if we weren't there together, instead of encroaching on my space paulatinely through the night. We will see, we will see... but now I work.

martes, abril 04, 2006

contentious carrots and other minor skirmishes

The rain has been a constant drumming down, down, down. I had to rip the corner of my bedroom rug up off the floor because there was a massive and yet mysterious leak that was actually seeping upwards from the middle of the tiles, but directly related to the crumbling door frame. Luckily I thought to put in a work order and there was a big dehumidifier chugging away in my bedroom upon return. I don't really mind the wetness otherwise, the cold a little, especially while biking in a short skirt, but the collateral damage is an unfortunate reality. It seems that you forget what it was like when there was eternal sunshine, and yet the depressive fog that had settled over me has been lifting steadily, the sadness remains, but not the depression. I tried to explain that to the psychiatrist today who was eager to medicate me, just in case, and who I carefully sidestepped, for now. (She claims that if I have a history of depression I am likely to become depressed again, and that indefinite mood enhancers are the only way to ensure its abatement. The problem is, of course, that when I am happy, wait, have I ever been happy, yes I must have been, when I am happy I lose my drive, and that is problematic, not to mention the lack of control thing. Maybe now it the time to retry St. John's Wort?)

So, on other fronts, I am forcing vegetables on I. more and more because I feel that her palate is fertile for change. I made her favorite mexican pasta soup yesterday: sauteed onion and garlic and alphabet pasta, then pureed tomato sauce, and chicken broth, and today she ate carrots, raw unadulterated carrots, with ranch dressing (alas) and a goodly sized portion of lasagna that I made the other day. I made a very small lasagna, as we are very small eaters, and I didn't have mozzarella, ricotta, or parmesan, but substituted by pureeing with my handy dandy hand-held blender a cup of cottage cheese, and decorating with flourishes of romano and provolone (more commonly available in my fridge.) I was very happy that she sat at the table and ate (while I ruminated on my salad) everything except the mushrooms (it was a meatless mushroom sort of lasagna, with a leftover ragu that I made a few weeks ago and supplemented with pureed tomato.) I am not sure I like the no-boil pasta that everyone and their brother seems to be pushing these days, there is nothing quite as satisfying as boiling the long wrinkly edged noodles al dente and then slurping them dry through rigid fingers before laying them decoratively in the glass pan, not to mention that the consistency of these other thinner noodles isn't as satisfying when masticated, but then I was just using up the end of a box, it will likely be another year before I have the desire to make that again.

So now it is off to Narnia and bed... al this reading until the wee hours is catching up with me, and when I finish the Sonata de Otoño, fraught with withering love and paths of error, I will retire for the evening. One novel is enough per day, for now.

domingo, abril 02, 2006

Old friends and new

I am procrastinating. Clearly. Why else would I be posting a random and poorly written blog at 11 pm the night before spring quarter begins and I teach in the wee hours of the madrugada, o sea, 9 am. Bright and early. This spring break has been somewhat of an emotional roller coaster, much like the rest of my life these days. Vacations should get no reprieve, now should they?

I kicked off my vacation by making a new friend. And in fact I am still up and bouncing from the belly dancing that we did at her birthday party this evening, fully overwhelmed by food, and energized for at least another hour or so of reading. I. has been at her Dad's house all weekend and I miss her. Terribly. I stopped by to see her in a flourish of motherly need and she was so fast asleep that she couldn't even be stirred by the sarta de besos que le di... I was kissing her face and whispering in her ear and she just rolled over and pulled the covers up over her head. Typical.

So I made a date with this new friend, a sweet girl just a year older than me, from Brasil. The day I met her, you know how you know that you need to be someone's friend. We knew. We just took our time getting there. She was new this year and I have been protecting my interests, that is, not over investing in friendships because I, like my feet, have no stopping mechanism and we will both equally grind ourselves into nothingness, giving until there is no more give and the pain is so severe that there is no solution but isolation and (in the case of my feet) stretching excercises and therapeutic shoes.

I bought new shoes. Cute little strappy sandals and another pair of slightly understated leather single band sandals. Both black. Both relatively inexpensive. That was with another girlfriend - K. (P.'s mom) and I had a girl day and drank wine and beer and went shopping after she packed. I haven't shopped for myself since 2003, I think and I decided that I need to pamper myself just a little bit, so I bought myself 5 new springy dresses that accentuate my curves, but in a sufficiently demure way that I can bike my way to work and teach without defying the laws of common decency or university conduct (just slightly nudging the envelope). I need to feel good about myself, and investing an extra ten minutes a day, putting on the myriad rings and necklaces, bracelets and earrings that inhabit the boxes high up in my closet, make me feel a little better about confronting the day. In fact, getting spruced up for no one in particular is actually much more satisfying than trying to please someone specific (anyone really) who would never be interested even if you painted your body in neon mud and paraded yourself in circles around their front lawn. Sigh. But I digress. I was saying that I have literally been surrounded by friends and that Ellen, that's her name, and I, two Fridays ago had a coffee date at 3 in the afternoon and talked until 8pm at which point we decided it was time to go out to dinner, which we did, before continuing on our respective Friday night journeys, parting at 10. I was filled with the joy of wooing a new friend, and no, I don't mean anything sexual by that, just the charming of someone new and being likewise charmed, sharing all the stories or most of the stories or at least some of the stories that will fill each other in on the background of who the other is, you know, common history, like the sixteen year old boyfriend and how you broke his heart (or in my case, how he broke yours) and your family history, the years of ennui and how you ended up where you are, and let's not forget the breadth of current events that are scattered across the table or the couch, as if they had always been shared knowledge. Or as the other K. put it, downloading.

So one friend-wooing down, and old timers from out of town to go. Jeff came on Saturday and I drove down to LA to pick him up where we continued on almost to San Diego, where Stacey came running out of her house to meet us. It has been almost 6 years since I have seen her, since then, she and Robbie got married and he showed up just a little bit later, and so did Ben, who I haven't seen since I was pregnant and we all went to see our old buddy Alex do a comedy improv at some theater in Boston and I had to skip the bowl that was being passed around in honor of the growing cluster of cells in my uterus which have now manifested themselves in extraordinary ways. Ben was duly impressed. We spent the first night drinking bottle after bottle of red wine, after which I made sangría (though they didn't have sufficiently el cheapo wine to really justify the desperdicio) and we drank some of their special reserve krupnick (?) Polish fire vodka, wow, that was good.

It almost felt, in that really wonderful way of coming back to old friends who know you in ways that even you didn't realize that people still can, that time hasn't really passed, not in any significant way and Robbie is still Robbie (though now he surfs), and Stacey and I are still devilishly unconventional in our conventionality, and Jeff and Ben can still argue just like they used to about some inane point and it is totally refreshing. We were reliving moments of glory, almost ten years since we spent only one year together (ok, they spent many more than that, but I was only with them for one glorious year) and they all agree that my arrival our senior year was like a breath of fresh air that they all needed, a quirky uber-liberal off the wall girl from Pennsylvania via Argentina who wasn't afraid to masturbate (and talk about it) and who, Ben whispers, "didn't shave her legs!" So terribly frightfully weird. (And yet I just shaved my legs yesterday in honor of my new wardrobe) Jeff discovered in my year book a comment from a boy who spent many hours of class gape mouthed at my far left of center-field view point, that he thought I was a good person, despite being a little too liberal for his tastes... He subsequently became a raging hippie in college, I like to think I planted a seed, somewhere... Ben claims (and I had to laugh really hard about this) "I didn't even know about sex until I met Ilana." stated with proper emotion, and gushing admiration. It was really good to see those guys. We stayed up late and had breakfast together, and the Ben left us to our devices. We four grown-ups and one little person made a bee-line for the beach, with the requisite layover at the toy-store. Rob never went to the beach without beach toys and I think the last time we four were all at the beach, was the week after our graduation that we spent with Robbie's parents at Salisbury beach, just over the border in Massachusetts from Hampton beach, and the water was so frigid in mid June, just at my birthday, I think, that it was like slamming your head against a block of concrete as you dove under the waves, but we did it anyway and it felt good. Then I remember that sans Jeff, I had visited Robbie and Stacey with Alex a few summers later in Rhode Island, and maybe that was the last time that we lounged around on the sand since. Robbie surfed, after he brought some really crappy beer in a cooler and Jeff and I. actually went in the water (I have pictures to prove it). The monkey child was the only one not cold, and Stacey and I looked at cheap celebrity magazines and to my chagrin I was highly amused by my very repulsion to the whole Hollywood star scene. Barfola.
So she and I snuck off to the store and bought tri-tip and vegetables while the boys and the child were watching Return of the Jedi, and made a marvelous barbecue, with kielbasa and pineapple and marinated mushrooms and bell peppers and I created, from vague memory of the Moosewood cookbook's recipe, a peanut sauce to accompany and use on the rice, and there was far more food than we could eat, but we did anyway, and the cava was excavated, just a little (that's the difference of course, back then Robbie and I both remembered the time he and Maria and I all had our own individual bottle of Asti and we got ripped under the pool table in my parent's basement.) Robbie and I were the bad kids and we laugh about the time he and Ben and I skipped school (Jeff and Stacey were too good to skip) and took off down to Boston and panhandled, well actually, played the guitar and sang in front of the Science Museum and we made $2.75 and two condoms! That was the best part, of course, the two condoms for our musical serenade, and how I took them to Ara's house in Sommerville and initiated Ben in the wisdom of the herb and how it was all down hill from there for him (I seem to remember I two-foot water pipe was in the mix there) and I discover something that I had never fully articulated before and it was that I was a little in love with one of my teachers, and I never knew it until just then, and that maybe he was a little in love with me, but we'll never know, though it might make for good novel fodder, ah, yes, I don't know. The characters for my next novel are beginning to grow, little by little, they are trying on names and professions, histories and heartaches. There will be lots of heartache, how could there not be? How can you write a novel from anywhere except brokenhood, or rather, that or madly passionate ardent love. A novel can be a love letter too, I suppose, though I don't think they work very well as that because mostly the ideal reader gets bored and doesn't finish it, and the most important part of the love letter gets lost in the obligation. At least that is my experience, but frankly who am I to speak such things I have done nothing of the sort. (And it dawns on me that I really want to find a creative writing group somewhere near home because I need real live feedback, and I wonder to myself how I would go about finding such a group... Jeff's answer, of course would be - The internet! and I do have to thank him for his nerdly help on downloading my ipod back onto my computer, in reverse - called "senuti" and saved me the trouble of re-ripping all my cd's to my computer instead of M.s old one)

And the next day it is Monday and Robbie has to go back to his job as hyper-geek sound engineer for computer game company and Stacey to her direction of a childcare center, and Jeff and I take I. to Legoland (she had informed us before we began the trip that we had to go). I don't know who had more fun, Jeff or I. and of course I enjoyed myself too, but they were like kids in a candy shop, or a lego shop, which, in essence they were. I was showing off the geekitude of my kiddo, as she quoted at will scenes from Labyrinth, The Princess Bride, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Goonies (she does a great Bowie impression). I have done my job well.

When we came back to SB, I met one of Jeff's long-standing virtual writing buddies, who was also sweet and wonderful (and I had forgotten how much I love hanging out with gay men - it's just like hanging out with straight ones, without the hassle or the fear of misinterpreted signals) and who I wooed sufficiently (he works in computer stuff at the University library) with a from scratch cream of broccoli and mushroom soup and several bottles of Yellowtail Shiraz (so excellent and well within my price range) that I think we will be able to continue being friends. Which makes me happy because my need for real live people has deepened significantly, as my escapism has been on the wane (I say this as I write into my little machine of death all the random thoughts that pop into my head like how Jenny and I were joking on a non-dissertation consultatio about how we always end up lounging around in bed masturbating while we are trying to get academic reading done. Why the fuck? I wonder, especially since it is usually such dry reading, but she suggests that maybe it is precisely because of the boredom factor that one's hand absent-mindedly slips down and begins to look for more interesting activities. Anyway)

I did get a good amount of work done and I am kicking myself into super high-gear. I have 6 novels to read by weeks end and then I will give myself respite by reading about 15-20 books of poetry, before tackling the tail-end of theater, and then going back to reading over notes and literary histories. I have decided that I will not fail miserably. That despite my personal life being a total mess and my heart being so crushed and broken into a thousand smithereens, that it almost feels like I have no heart any more, and I drive home and the tears roll down my cheeks in the darkness, with broken glass shining on the pavement and a biker, any biker, really, reflecting the light back at me in a red flash, and the droplets of water glistening on the limpid surface of my cobalt blue car, and everything seeming topsy-turvy and me, being pragmatic and cold, and heartless, and I remember that I do have a heart and it has been sufficiently stomped on, mostly by me, but not just me, and I ache enough to know that I am real, and not just a figment of my very own imagination, and that I deserve to be happy, eventually, and I will be, and I will be, and I will go, travelling, lose myself in the not knowing, in the possibility, and K. will meet me and we will stay with her family in France, and with mine in Madrid, and it will be us, two girls, 10 years older and brokenhearts behind us, or tagging alone like uninvited little sisters that need to be shooed away with laughter, and the laughter has been with me, and will still be with me, I'll laugh until I cry, and that, my friends, is the reason, the reason that friends exist, and the reason that sometimes we just need to put things away for a while, and when we take them back out they seem shiny and new precisely because of their absence and their sudden reappearance in our lives.