Mindfulness

In my twenties, I landed in some difficult existential situations that caused me to 1) drink a lot 2) have a lot of boyfriends 3) get sick a lot 4) drink a lot. At a certain point, I stopped bathing regularly and I could barely get out of bed during the day. Finally, my then-boyfriend, a truly wonderful man, carried me to our car and drove me directly to a therapist's office, an event which marked the beginning of my talk-therapy years with a kind woman whose last name, Fine, reassured me psychically that some day I would be just that: Fine.

During our sessions together, she'd put me into a trance state, and I would "travel" back in time to a period where I was experiencing an anxiety similar to the one I was feeling in the current timeframe. One day when the anxiety I carried into her office was crushing my chest, I found myself, during the trance, standing before a door in a dark hallway. Behind the door, this greenish light radiated so brightly that it threatened to break down the door. The door was in the middle of my chest, and when I came out of the trance and explained the image, the door became a drawer, a drawer in my chest filled with dangerous light.

The light petrified me. I was sure that it was radioactive, emitting some type of psychological poison through my veins. I was sure it was symbolic of a deep dark secret I was keeping from myself because the truth was too horrible to bear consciously.

I saw Ms. Fine intermittently over several years. Towards the end of our work together, she was beginning her practice as a Mindfulness teacher. I took the first eight-week workshop she offered. Two students signed up; one dropped out, leaving just Ms. Fine and me.

We started each 2 1/2 hour session with a body scan, where we lay on the floor in corpse pose, mentally scanning our bodies inch by inch for places where we were holding stress. When we'd find a place, we would bring our awareness to it and then let the stress go. After the body scan, we discussed our findings with one another. Next we did some gentle yoga. Again, we discussed the resistances, the limitations the yoga showed we were carrying. Then came the hard part: 20 to 45 minutes of sitting meditation, sometimes called zazen. We'd close with a reading from a spiritual tradition -- Zen, Native American, Hindu, Christianity, etc. No matter what anxiety I carried into her office, I always left feeling lighter and freer and seriously better. During the week, I tried to rise in the early morning to do yoga and sit for a while before getting ready for work.

In the last session I had with Ms. Fine, I experienced a physical revelation during the body scan. I found myself back at the door with the light behind it. At least two years had passed since I'd been there. I decided it was time for me to face this tragic light; I was strong enough. As I pulled the door open, the light became viscous, like lava, and it rushed through my heart into my body, not burning me, rather lighting me on fire, a divine fire. I felt like I was having the best sex of my life; the feeling was so intense. I let the fire roll in me and around me. It went on and on and on.

Finally, I came back to the room with Ms. Fine. I opened my eyes and sat up.

"What happened?" she said, aware that I was drastically changed by something that had taken place.

I told her about the experience, bawling tears of gratitude and humility. How could I have been so fooled? I wondered. Why did it take me so long to realize that the light in me was not going to kill me, that the light in me would let me live more richly than I had ever imagined?

First Date, June 30, 2000

We went to the Glassell School and watched Belle du Jour. Then we went to his apartment and had a picnic on the hardwood floor. We talked until 3 a.m.; then we kissed; then he drove me home.

House and Home

David and I are searching for a house to buy. Our budget requires us to be "creative" or "pioneers." With our budget, people say we need to have "vision," to be able to see not only the possibilities inherent in any given property, but also the future; i.e., trends regarding how certain areas are going to develop, or not develop. I have this type of vision, and I have intuition, and armed with these two things, I still have not found a house that turns me on. What I do NOT have is a realtor, and common wisdom tells me that this is what I really need. However, I cannot break away from house crack long enough to find a realtor.

One of the issues that divides David and me in our search for our future home is wood paneling. I am generally for it, if it's in good condition; David is generally against it. I don't mind it if it looks like this:



But David would rather it not be there at all.

I grew up with wood paneling -- pecky cedar paneling -- in our ranch house. It smelled great, but was full of these big naturally occurring holes that lizards liked to crawl in and out of while my siblings and I were sitting on the couch watching after-school cartoons. The lizards were huge, practically dragon-sized compared to the little lizards that I see in Houston. Come to think of it, I don't think I've seen ANY lizard in Houston that is larger than all the lizards that crawled in and out of our family room walls.

Music Lessons

When I turned seven, my mom asked me if I wanted to play an instrument. I said, "Cello." She said, "Hell, no." Too expensive. She said, "Guitar looks kinda like a cello, right? How about the guitar?" I shrugged my shoulders into saying yes.

My first teacher, my only teacher, was mom's friend Janet Boucher. Her house was hidden up in the hills, and she kept chickens, goats, and a horse on her property. She had long black hair, wore caftans, baked her own bread and drove a VW van. The first song I ever learned was "Stewball," a song about a racehorse by Peter, Paul and Mary. The second one I learned was "Bobby McGee" by Janis Joplin. The third song I learned was "Folsom Prison Blues," by Johnny Cash. The forth song I learned was "Blowin' in the Wind," by Bob Dylan. I mustered up the courage and told Janet I wanted to learn something by John Denver, my teen heart-throb at the time. The next week she taught me "Leaving on a Jet Plane."

From then on it was John Denver every week for a long, long time.

Silhouette

Crack is Whack; Life is Fresh

I remember visiting New York City in 1983 with my mom, my sister and my cousin Sue. We took a taxi to the Bronx to visit my mom's alma mater, Mount Saint Vincent College. On the ride up there, I stared out the window, feeling a little frightened but mostly energized by the city. As the neighborhood grew grimmer, I spied this massive instance of graffiti sprayed on the side of a red brick building: a large orange background with the slogan "Crack is Whack; Life is Fresh" painted in black. I wondered silently what it meant.

That evening while my mom and her college roommate drank wine and gabbed in the dining nook of her Upper East Side efficiency apartment, I watched the news. A newscaster was reporting about the "war on drugs." Suddenly, a picture of the same graffiti flashed on the screen. "I saw that today!" I said to Alicia and Sue.

"What does it mean?" Sue asked.

"I don't know," I said. It was the first time I'd ever heard of crack.

I thought of this today while listening to Dean Becker's "Century of Lies" on KPFT, Houston's Pacifica Radio station. He had Matthew Robinson on the show, Robinson is the author of "Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics: A Critical Analysis of Claims Made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy," by Matthew Robinson and Renee Scherlen (2007, State University of New York Press). I probably won't read that book, but I'm glad they took the time and energy to write it.

Clara Belle

Today she read the word AM. She pointed to the word and sounded it out. AM-azing.

I remember the day she was born. I always will remember it as if it happened yesterday. I do in fact feel the rush of Time's winged chariot. It's so close, The End, when The Beginning is always, also, so near.

On the hills that rose across the valley from my house, a giant C was emblazoned on the hillside. Most of the time, the c was set off by brown grasses, but sometimes, in the springtime, it gleamed from a sea of green grass dotted with herds of grazing sheep. The C stood for Capistrano, and it had been put there by some high school kids from Capistrano Valley High School in the 1960s. Until my father told me the story of how it got there, I thought it stood for Christa.

Prince Charming

David is up for a community service award sponsored by the Houston Grand Opera in conjunction with their Cinderella Ball gala extravaganza on March 31. Clearly a marketing scheme for the Opera to try and lure young people into their aging audience, they have created a text-message-based voting campaign, a la American Idol, in their attempt to appeal to a younger generation. I myself have never seen American Idol -- honest -- but I did finally figure out how to text message from my Razor phone so that I could vote for my husband. The winner will be named "Prince Charming" at the Cinderella Ball's "Ever After" Party.

Gag me with a glass slipper.

HOWEVER! I am totally in support of David being recognized for his tireless and dynamic community service, and so I'm urging you to vote for him by texting the phrase "everafterhim" into your cell phone and sending it to 66937. When you get the ballot in your message box, please check "A" for David Brown.

You can look David's profile as well as the other candidates by going here. Please note that David is the only candidate who included his wife in his "dream dinner guests" list.

In my book, he has already earned the title of Prince Charming.

Today, a lone protester staked out a spot in front of the Post Office on Richmond with handmade signs bearing the slogan "War On Stupidity." As in "we're warring against stupidity;" as in "rage on, Stupidity." Of course, G.W. Bush's face graced the signs, too.

This year when it came time to Bush's State of the Union Speech, I forced myself to watch it. The only way I could stand to do so -- normally the sound of his voice affects me like a cockroach crawling into my ear -- was to pretend I was a Republican. I enjoy pretending, so I kind of got excited to listen to the speech, pretending that Bush was my hero.

As I listened with this perspective, I found myself liking him a little bit, not liking him enough to really like him, but liking him enough to feel compassion for him. He has a hard job. I'm sure his stupidity doesn't make it any easier for him to do that job. Or maybe it does.

California Dreaming

Passing Time

In my home town, the mission bells were rung every hour on the hour. For many years, a man named Paul Arce rang them. He'd begin pulling the bell ropes to the tune of "Oh Maria, Madre Mia," a Mexican hymn to the Virgin Mother. Then he gonged a bell for however many hours we were marking at that time, one, two, three, four, etc. On the half hour, say at 4:30, he'd clap a bell once. The passing of my entire childhood was marked by the ringing of these bells.

Whale Watching, 1980

Humpbacks fanned sea water from their flukes. Vanessa puked because she left her dose of Dramamine on shore. Along the barges’ edge, we watched some dolphins skimming in the wake, undulating muscularly. We learned that whales leave behind their footprints, slick wet coins upon the water’s surface.

My Sweetheart

Everyday.

Nostalgia

I been double-crossed now for the very last time and now I'm finally free,
I kissed goodbye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me.
You'll never know the hurt I suffered nor the pain I rise above,
And I'll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love,
And it makes me feel so sorry.

-- Bob Dylan, "Idiot Wind"

Two people meet, become friends, confidants, soulmates, whathaveyou. Each carries in her front pocket a kaleidoscope of experiences, which she fingers as she speaks and listens. Soon she takes it out and sets it on the kitchen table between them. "Look," she says. "Look at how it looks through mine." This is called, "Getting to Know You."

After a time, a million little somethings happen that trip the circuits inside one of them, and the other does and doesn't understand what happened to the wiring, but the current feels rawer, knob and tuber, shock it to her. Their separate worlds stop gliding side by side and collide.

But once upon a lifetime, they hung and spun the world through one another's eyes.

These Little Piggies

When I was a child, my feet garnered a lot of attention, specifically my toes. Long, thin, situated relatively far from one another, they have big "heads" and look like aliens growing out of my feet. My toe nails curve over the head, like helmets, intensifying their alien-in-a-spacesuit appearance. To top it off, the nail on my pinky toe is almost non-existent. And I developed a habit at a young age of picking it, so that what was left, was mangled beyond recognition.

Throughout my life, people have stared and laughed out loud at my feet. I was thinking about this today, about how my cousins used to make so much fun of me while camping at the beach during the summer, how they pointed and laughed and whispered to one another while pointing and laughing. As I remembered, I thought to myself, "Well, it's a good thing that they're far away from my face, out of sight most of the time! Covered by shoes!"

I think my children might be spared my toe-genes. I've already examined their feet, and they look pretty perfect to me.

Hallucinatory Heat

I'm so nervous about the approach of summer. Nervous is too light a word; in truth, I'm terrified. This coming summer I will have not one but two children to shepherd through the ENDLESS days of Houston's summer while trying to mitigate the stifling heat, humidity, the ravenous mosquitoes. What in the world are we going to do?

I remember in the old days (around 1993), I would deal with the Houston summer by pretending that I lived in Vietnam. I'd do this in a couple of ways: first, by lying in bed all afternoon in my green silk slip, smoking cigarettes, perspiring and staring languorously at the circling ceiling fan. I imagined I was a character in a Marguerite Duras novel. Or something. The metallic drone of cicadas created the monotonous soundtrack to my performance for myself. Outside, bamboo, birds of paradise and elephant ears grew a screen against my window, like a Henri Rousseau painting.



When I went outside (no longer in a slip, but protected by loose-fitting cotton or linen clothing), I'd let my eyes blur so as not to see the American cars and business signs; I could scramble any English I heard into something that sounded in my head like nonsense. By tricking myself into thinking I was living in an exotic foreign country, I could appreciate the heat, actually embrace it. When I remembered that the heat, the humidity, the mosquitoes composed my real life, I crumpled under the oppression of reality.

When that happened, my imagination moved me to Paris.







*I found Rousseau's painting "Exotic Landscape" on www.myrrhine.net/newyear/ images/rousseau1.jpg

From One Cake to Another

When I was 7, my brother Marco, then 5, acted so out of control sometimes that my mom figured something must be "wrong" with him. Finally, she took him to see an allergist in Laguna Beach, a doctor who did a skin prick test on him and delivered the news that Marco was allergic to wheat, milk, eggs, peanuts, corn, citrus; and, furthermore, he had a sugar intolerance. I remembering hearing this report from my mother and having my jaw drop. I remember the drop of my jaw. I remember asking, "what is he gonna eat?!!" In answer to my question, my mother pulled a bag of rice cakes from a shopping bag.

First of all, they looked nothing like cake.

Second of all, they tasted nothing like cake.

I recently discovered that I am allergic to some of these things, too; only it took me over 30 years to figure this out. And, also, as I'm figuring out, it is difficult to think of things to eat when staples like wheat, milk, eggs, butter, and sugar (hello, CAKE!), are no longer available.

Ah, rice cakes. Welcome back.

Memento Mori

--from a mosaic in Pompeii

Trees

My brothers and I used to play in the white oak that grew in the corner of our front yard. Perched in its branches, we sailed the world. The white oak had everything we needed for our journey: a galley, a hold, a deck, sailor's quarters, a sturdy "crow's nest" in the uppermost branches. It had a plank, too -- a branch where mutinous villians had to hang upside down by the crooks of their knees.

Almost everyday during my childhood, I climbed a tree: oak, walnut, pine, sycamore, mangrove. Most of our forts were made within the confines of a tree's branches. There was a huge red pepper tree down the street, whose branches fell like a weeping willow's all the way to the ground, leaving a hollowed out area in the center around the trunk. We set up house underneath that tree, and many of the toys we brought there remained there for years.

I had no idea then that these trees were growing into me, that I was growing into them.

Still Life, California 1972

Some Things I Have Done that I've Been Paid to Do

Salesgirl
Babysitter
Sacker
State Park Aid
Host Helper
Waitress
Writing Instructor
Copy Editor
Program Developer
Teaching Assistant
Research Assistant
Writer in Residence
English Teacher
Performer
Editor
Private Tutor
Corporate Recruiter
Writer

Without End, a Celebration

Tonight there was a celebration honoring the poet Adam Zagajewski and his 19 years as a visiting professor at the University of Houston's Creative Writing Program. He was my teacher there, so I went to the celebration at the Menil Collection.

As the evening of homages by Ed Hirsch, Jennifer Grotz and Sara Rothenberg progressed, I did not expect the flood of emotions I found myself swimming in; I could barely contain my feelings of sadness. I wasn't sad that Adam is leaving -- I haven't talked to him in years. Rather, my sadness grew out of the landscape that developed inside me, indicating the gulf between my life now and my life then, back when I was a young poet.

I was once a young poet. As a young poet, I was filled with so much feeling it nearly destroyed me. Ardor: I brimmed with it.

Tonight, I found myself drowning in memories that reduced me to near-pure ache. I missed my old self, as self-destructive and awful as that self might have been. As I listened to Sara Rothenberg play Chopin's Ballade #4 for Adam, tears poured down my cheeks. Moments I'd forgotten from so many years and so many years ago swelled up in my imagination. I missed my old arduous self, as passionate and sincere as that self might have been.

At the end of the night, an old friend named Pam Diamond introduced me to a young man named Jericho. "He's a young poet," she said.

"I used to be a young poet," I said.

"What are you now? A young fiction writer?"

"No," I said. "Now I'm a middle aged blogger." I laughed at myself, by myself.

Driving home, I thought about how poetry used to be everything to me, and about how teachers like Adam and Ed stoked the fire that burned in my soul. And for a few minutes as I drove home on West Alabama, after deciding not to go to the "reception" at Lillie Robertson's house, I weighed the life I had then with the life I have now. There is no comparison. They are two different lives, but I am the same soul.

And it dawns on me now that this is what our experience here on this earth, in these bodies, is: many, many different lives experienced by the same soul, who is changed by each life, but who remains, also, the same.

Splinter

My doctor pulled a one-inch splinter out of the back of my thigh today. I got it from a bench at the Japanese garden in Hermann Park when I slid right on a bench to make room for Clara. Dr. Knafo prescribed antibiotics in case of a staph infection, but I haven't taken them yet because I'm thinking that maybe my body will heal itself alright. Because I'm nursing, I would have to take clindimycin, 4 pills a day for 10 days. That's a lot of antibiotic-taking. My other doctor friend tells me that I might not have to take them; the body does a good job of healing itself. The foreign object is out; the wound was cleaned. Who knows.

I swear some days I feel like I'm literally falling apart.

I remember a time before this...this...what is it? Middle age? a time before middle age when the thought of my body falling apart dwelled in another universe. I trashed my body by drinking and smoking, and I thought nothing of it. I remember hearing people say, "the body is a temple," and I was like "what? whatever!" Now I think about the fact that my body is a temple, a temple for my life.

If I trash it, then where will I live?

Pacific

Tonight I want the ocean, its thick breath lapping
up against my body. I want the muscles of the waves
carrying me down into whole prairies of kelp and coral.
If for some reason the sea should be sleeping,
I want to wake it with my bones clamoring
in the cold, my hair stroking its sides,
my sighs escaping through its beaded skin.

I sought the desert because it opened like an evening
oyster revealing sticky amber pearls. It's true:
it was as sort of sea swept by sand.

I ravished mountains: their damp labyrinths
of oaks and firs. Moss roses unravelled in my hair,
charred pinon chaffed my cheeks. It was ugly; so I left.

I tried men, smoke, drink, and drives,
women, work, dresses and dreams
but I couldn't escape the feverish fix
of the sea's tongue upon the shore,
the abrupt shudder of a wave slapping sand.

I want open-palmed skies. Generous horizons,
lagoons of gulls. Not fixed lights against this
neon dusk, but beacons swellling in siren's songs.

So I call the moans of lighthouses.
I call the flame of Western suns.
I call drift wood rot, oil rig slicks,
quarantined beaches thick with sludge
and the deepest burns my body can stand.

Even if no more but this --
if it is given, it will be mine,
and I will call it mine.

1991

Actual

Sometimes, people ask me what religion I am. My students sometimes wanted to know -- what do I believe in? as in God. For many years, my answer has been the same: "I believe everything is everything." You know, like in Sly and The Family Stones' "Let Me Have It All."

I remember one of my high school students raising his hand. When I called on him, he said, "I believe that, too." I bet he did believe it, too.

***********

I'm sitting here tonight, listening to music by Tony Barilla. I found it right next to Al Green's "I'm Still In Love With You," album, which I was putting back during my search for "Fresh," as I was wanting to listen to "Let Me Have It All." While I put the music up, I thought to myself, "Intuition, you choose." So I looked and there next to Al Green was a compilation of music from shows by Infernal Bridegroom Productions, much of the music written by Tony, who's leaving with Emily for Kosovo tomorrow.

Kosovo seems so far, so foreign. I'm sure Tony will thrive there. Emily says they'll be there for a couple more years, maybe. Emily is a human rights activist/lawyer. In her early 20s, she started a non-profit organization in Houston to help Bosnian refugees navigate the maze of issues they would face when they arrived in the U.S. after the war. Now she lives in Kosovo and spends her days navigating back and forth across a bridge, to help negotiate a peace between the Albanians on the South side of the river and the Serbians on the North side. You can read all about where Tony and Emily are going here: stuck inside of heathrow on the IBP Forum.

I just heard the Opening of the opening of Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros. It took me back to that show, one of the first we did after Jason Nodler left, one of Tony's first as Artistic Director. I remember those damn Rhino heads breaking my arms at the end of that play. I worked the head behind Cathy Power. I felt like we were stashed in the hold of a slave ship, rowing our ship through the ocean in darkness. The effect of all those Rhino heads crowding into the room as Daisy and Berenger fall apart -- no words. Fantastic.

When Jason Nodler left, I was sad, too. Very sad. Sadder than I knew what to do with. I can't even talk about when he left, I was that sad. When friends leave, it breaks your heart a lot most times. If they're good friends, favorite friends.

Coincidence

I'm in a rambling mood. Maybe it's the full moon.

I remember the time Gail Wronsky, my poetry teacher in college, told me how much she liked a rhyme I made in some poem. The rhyme was moon and eyes. Her comment confused me for a long time.

I remember having to take off my jeans one summer day while walking from Kroger down Montrose to 29 Pinedale. I was wearing this long poet's shirt from CP Shades to protect my skin from the sun, and I idiotically wore jeans. I had taken the bus to Kroger, but it was a Saturday, and the 34 wasn't running much. Waiting at the bus stop near Kroger in the heat and humidity was already killing me, so why not, I thought, just walk to the next stop?

Because it's 99 degrees and 97% humidity! That's why.

Anyone doubt global warming? Spend 17 summers in a row in Houston, TX and then tell me global warming isn't happening. If you do, you can join my idiot club, because truly what kind of brainiac walks down Montrose in the summer in jeans and a long sleeve shirt? THIS KIND. I have my reasons. What are yours?

Regardless of the heat and humidity, I kept walking to the next stop, and the bus never arrived, so finally there was no bus stop between me and my apartment, and I realized I had pretty much walked three miles or so home. This realization woke me up to the debilitating heat rash I was suffering from. I had just walked under 59, and of course not even the shade could help me. I took off my jeans, hoping that my poet's shirt looked like a minidress (it covered my butt, but barely.) It would have been no big deal, really because who cares, right? I walked down Montrose wearing only a shirt and my underwear. Other people have probably walked down it completely naked. The problem was that Jerry Finger's new highrise on Montrose (near the Masonic Temple) was being built, and the construction crew was working on the facade. What kind of clichéd coincidence is that?

So when I walked by, I had not a bunch of guys looking at me, but like two out of twenty noticing me, and those two didn't even catcall. If I hadn't been so embarrassed, I would have felt humiliated.

I just remembered that Emily (of Emily and Tony who are leaving Sunday for their new life together in Kosovo; I need to hook them up with my friend the foreign service agent, I mean officer, who's moving to Macedonia) lived at 29 Pinedale, too.

Regrets?

I have a few.

Recently, Heather Armstrong of Dooce fame celebrated the 6th anniversary of her website, the one she was fired for keeping. I've been reading her blog ever since she received a place in Time Magazine's 50 best blogs. She held the place of honor for best parenting blog. I think she's a great writer most of the time -- funny, poignant, intelligent, irreverent. I like her style bombastic. In her anniversary entry, she poses the age old question about what one would do differently if one could. While I have many regrets, namely ones that involve the loss of old friends, there isn't anything I would do differently. For this peace, I'm grateful.

Confession

When I was a teenager, I was mostly good. I did not smoke; I did not drink; I did not have sex. I received good grades. But there was one year -- the year before my sophomore year in high school -- when I was very, very bad. A year when I swiped things. Acquired things surreptitiously. Stole, to be exact. Shoplifted to be exacter.

I only shoplifted from one store: the Beauty Supply store in my hometown. I shoplifted there because it was so easy, like falling off a wall. The owner crammed too many aisles comprised of high shelves into a narrow shoebox-like space -- a shoplifter's paradise really.

The largest thing I ever stole was a $90.00 fake nail kit. When my mom found it in the bathroom drawer and asked me how in the world I'd acquired a $90 nail kit, I told her I bought it on sale.

Along with only shoplifting from one store, I only stole when I was with a friend, one friend in particular: Sophia Cordani. Sophia Cordani had been my best friend since third grade, when she transferred to our school from New Jersey. Her mother and father spoke Italian to one another at dinner. Her father had an Alpha Romeo in the garage, and whenever I spent the night with Sophia, we had sausage and peppers or spaghetti with cream and peas for dinner. After dinner, we listened to opera with her mother, before retiring to Sophia's bedroom with the pink chiffon "princess style" canopy bed.

By the time we were in fifth grade, Sophia could not walk down the street in our hometown without grown men stopping to stare at her as she passed by. My own father called her "that dirty Italian," as if she deserved infamy simply because she was beautiful beyond belief as a prepubescent girl.

Probably because of the lust she inspired in the entire male population, her parents decided to send her to an all-girls high school about 45 minutes away from our town, a particularly idiotic choice, which, rather than alleviating their fears regarding their daughter, caused them to metastasize. Sophia grew incredibly boy crazy, as any teenage girl starved of male companionship would. And she had her pick of male companionship believe me.

Because I went to the nearby public high school, Sophia and I rarely saw each other after our eighth grade graduation. The end of our friendship began the summer before our sophomore year. It was a summer of stealing nail files and polishes, expensive hairbrushes, a curling iron, the overpriced nail kit, false eyelashes, small tubes of hot oil. Each time I left the Beauty Supply store with my beach bag full of loot, I would say a Rosary to counteract the slew of new sins clouding my fledgling soul.

A few weeks before our sophomore year was slated to begin, we went shopping for clothes at the Mission Viejo Mall. Actually, Sophia wore a school uniform to her all-girls Catholic high school, so she was really there to steal, I suppose. She really wanted to go to Montgomery Ward, a store that no self-respecting teenager would frequent without being dragged there by a parent. I humored her, and soon we were roaming the beauty supply aisle, which was low, the shelves only coming up to our breasts. Sophia pulled a pair of cuticle cutters off its hook and handed it to me. "Here," she said, "put this in your bag."

"No way!" I said. "This store has security, Sophia."

"Chicken!" she said, dropping it in her own Mexican mesh bag. It wasn't enough that she stole things; she had to steal them in her see-through beach bag.

In that moment, I realized that Sophia had a bonafide problem. For her, stealing wasn't about getting free stuff; it was about the pleasure of getting away with breaking the law. While there may not seem to be one, there is a major difference between these two things in the mind of a teenage shoplifter.

That day was the official end of my friendship with Sophia, although not in any conscious sense. I think that more than anything, I felt sad that we had so little in common anymore. If my not wanting to steal a pair of cuticle cutters from Montgomery Ward made me a chicken in her eyes, then our friendship needed to end.

That much I knew.

Last Year at This Time

Last year at this time, David was preparing for two art shows of his work, both for Fotofest, both on the same weekend. The first was his installation in the small gallery at Diverseworks, called Urban Cathedral. The first two images are from that show. For the show, he built a false floor in the gallery, installed three light boxes underneath the floor, and installed transparencies of the freeway pattern in each lightbox. The floor and walls were carpeted with astroturf. The "windows" on the wall were laminated patterns of freeways.

The second was his show at Deborah Colton gallery, It's All Plastic. The photo featured here is called Stingray.

Diego

Because I'm muy white, almost as white as they come, people don't understand why my son has a Hispanic name. At first, I bet they assume that my husband is Hispanic, but he's not. According to him, he's Semitic.

When, toward an explanation, I tell people that I'm of Irish-Mexican descent, then they understand. Sort of. I mean, they don't really believe that I have Mexican blood, unless they're Mexican themselves. I'm really of Irish, English and Mexican descent, but that's too much of a mouthful, so I just say Irish Mexican. Furthermore, it shortens to Irexican, a term I learned from another Irish Mexican. In early California, the Anglo men married Mexican woman, simple as that; therefore, Irexicans are a larger American subgroup than one might initially believe.

More than any other reason, Diego is named so because my husband loves this name and he lobbied for it heartily. If Diego is named for anybody specific, he is named for Juan Diego, the Indian to whom the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared, the one she asked to build her a church. The Virgin of Guadalupe holds the highest place of deity in my family of origin for a variety of reasons, one being that we grew up on Guadalupe Street, another being her gift of performing miracles for my family.



After he was born and named, my uncle Joe called me to tell me how much he loved the name. "Diego is my hero!" he said.

Somewhat confused, I asked "What do you mean your hero?"

"Don Diego de la Vega," he said. "My hero."

"Who was Don Diego de la Vega?" I said.

"ZORRO!"

That's cool, too.

Oscar

Diego's name could have been Oscar; it was my #1 choice during his first trimester.

Beware of telling people names you're considering for your baby before the baby is born. Besides being bad luck in some astral planes, it's also a pain in the butt to have to listen to people's personal associations regarding your choices. Although, to be honest, that's one of the reasons you're telling people; either consciously or unconsciously, you want to know their associations. Because love begins with a name. In a way. So does hate. So one must, as in all things, choose wisely.

Oscar was one of my first loves. Oscar Rosales. I met him playing AYSO soccer. One cold afternoon at practice, our girls' team scrimmaged his boys' team. It was nearing dinner, a cold dusk; coastal fog started drifting across the field. We had been practicing for an hour already before the scrimmage started. Oscar played forward and was considered the best ball handler in San Juan Capistrano. I played goalie. I remember the feeling of sheer dread I had watching him approach the goal, dribbling the ball deftly with his Adidas cleats. Our own forwards had followed him because we needed all our defensive forces to fight his formidable power. Normally, we had Leah helping me defend the goal box while our forwards fought midfield, but today, she was too busy running after Oscar to have a spare moment to gossip. Even with all our resources, it seemed he could not be stopped.

He approached, he drove, he kicked the ball. Slammed it. Pummeled it Fired it. You name it. The ball came at the goal like a cannonball. I had to dive for it. Miracle of miracles, I blocked his shot. For a moment after that, I couldn’t hear anything. The adrenaline in my blood was so high, it was muting out the world's sound. Or else, it really was quiet and frozen for a minute, time. Next, it was like the film started again, and my team was yelling and jumping up and down. My coach, clapping and pumping her fist in the air, said, "Way to go, Christa!"

Honestly, until that moment, Oscar Rosales was not attractive to me at all; in fact, he was sort of scary looking. He was short, almost squat, had black curly hair, freckles, lots of hair on his body. He had a mustache -- at fourteen!

I held the ball in my hands for a beat, soaking in the feeling of triumph, one of the first I ever experienced. Then, I lob-kicked the ball downfield. Before turning and running after it, Oscar ran over to the goal box. "Good save," he said to me. He smiled. I saw that his eyes were impossibly green, his smile wide and sincere. He smittened me. In one moment, I went from being freaked out by him to being obsessively in love with him; I remained that way for seven years.

Oscar had the same girlfriend throughout high school, Allison. She was nice. I hated her and she hated me. Because even though Oscar and I never so much as danced together, he was one of my best friends throughout high school, and Allison knew that I loved him with a passion that was unmatched by any other girl -- other than her, of course. Oscar and Allison got married within two years after their high school graduation. I'm sure they are still married.

His second trimester, my first choice for Diego was Oedipus.

David's sick. It's Saturday, and usually we do all sorts of cool things as a family on Saturdays. But today, he's been groaning in bed all morning (it's only 12 noon) and I have been with the children. They're sick, too, although they're at the end of their colds.

Clara, Diego and I got up at 6, watched some Dora video about dancing to rescue Swiper, their kleptomaniac friend (these episodes are WAY too long). Then we played with the plastic Little People House. Clara loves this toy from Grandma MJ. "Mommy, sit! Daddy sit! Mommy, eat!, Daddy, eat!" she says, moving the plastic figurines around the little dining table. Around 8 a.m., Diego went down for a nap, and Clara and I drove to the farmer's market; we normally walk, but it's raining. We bought some Katz Coffee, some fresh broccoli, fennel, red leaf lettuce; some of Monica Pope's red pepper and walnut puree, farro, hummus, and some fresh herbed pita chips. We got home, put the stuff away, made breakfast -- eggs, cheese, and turkey sausage burritos (can I get an eeeeww from my vegan friends?), washed the dishes. Then it was 9 a.m.

Since then, we've been creating dances, rhymes, obstacle courses, listening to Indian filmi music, dancing some more, and generally trying to make the day pass as painlessly as possible, given that we're stuck inside with a sick daddy asleep in the bedroom.

I'm trying to remember what my brothers and sister and I did when we were little and stuck inside all day. Fought, of course. Built forts. Watched TV. Fought some more. Made popcorn. Drove my mom nuts (YOU KIDS ARE GONNA DRIVE ME CRAZY!). First of all, there were hardly any rainy days in Southern California; you know the song, right? Secondly, when it did rain, it didn't rain a whole lot. So I'm sure we went outside on rainy days because they were so exotic, so novel.

One of the differences between my childhood and my children's childhood is that my siblings and I lived in a small town, in a house with two yards, one in back and one in front, up on a hill where we knew all our neighbors. I used to ride my bike to the beach, which was four miles from my house. I rode on the bike trail built on the San Juan Creek flood control, where homeless men (we called them hobos) tended their fires and cooked their food in the cans set directly in the flames. My children live in Midtown Houston, which not long ago was a ghostly ghetto, though now it sports high priced lofts and a Starbucks. Our house is surrounded by major city streets -- Milam, Travis, Westheimer and Alabama -- and while there's a small patch of grass out front, most of the year it's full of stinging nettles and red ants. Not to mention the plethora of transient foot traffic (way more since Katrina) on our sidewalk, making its way to the rail line one block over. Simply put, where we live is not kid-friendly.

And I admit that I find myself sometimes fantasizing about a suburban home with a large yard where my kids can run around and throw balls hard and far.

Fun As It Comes

I got called home from the seximals at Brasil, their last "show" ever because Tony's moving to Kosovo to be with his wife Emily, who works for the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). I love the seximals, so when David called to tell me Diego was crying non-stop and would I please come home (David's really sick, otherwise he would have taken care of it), I felt sad sad sad. I love to watch Tony play the piano; when he does, a part of him that I rarely get to see shines through, so understated he is so much of the time. But when he plays music, he becomes FIERCE. I love it. Plus, I got to hang out with Emily who is not only the best dancer on the dance floor (not that there's any dancing to the seximals at Brasil), but also one of the smartest and most beautiful women I know. I'm not hyperbolizing here.

I got home to Diego crying and crying because he's a big fat baby. Literally. So I gave him some boobie, which immediately calmed him down. But every time I tried to set him back to bed, the wail, OH! the wail he let out. So he came out to the living room with me because I am not ready to go to bed yet.

I was going to write tonight about memories of friends, but Diego is here next to me, yawning, kicking me and farting smelly farts, and he's just too present for me to do anything but get back to him.

Here's a picture we just took for you to enjoy:



Good night now.

Obamarama

When was the last time I got excited about a presidential race? Jerry Brown, probably. 1992. The only reason I was excited, though, wasn't because I thought he would win -- I knew he wouldn't -- but because I knew him personally. I met him when I was 11 years old, at a cattle round up out the Ortega Highway at Rancho Mission Viejo. The Moiso family owned the ranch at that point (still do), making them gazillionaires, and they must have been financial supporters of his because every year for a while he was there, hanging out near the corral where cowboys were castrating calves.

When I moved to San Francisco at the end of the 80s, I lived with my best friend's oldest sister, Cathy Calfo. Cathy is a political wunderkind in California, a genius in grass-roots movements. At the time I lived with her (as her children's nanny), she was serving as the Vice-Chair of the California Democratic Party. Jerry Brown was the Chair. He was always coming over for dinner to strategize with Cathy about their next moves. He seemed to know EVERYBODY in the entire world. When he found out I was a writer, he asked me who my favorites were. At the time, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was one of my heroes.

"I'll introduce you to him," Jerry said. I called him Jerry. I don't know why I acted with such disrespect, but if you know the guy, he's more a Jerry than a Governor.

If you know the guy, you know that he's one of the smartest people you will ever meet. Which is exactly why I knew he would not become President of the United States. He was always coming up with new ideas, always thinking of ways to make things better, always strategizing, always caring about something huge and important and meaningful. He was so passionate, I couldn't see him in the job.

Tonight, I had the honor of meeting Barak Obama at a fundraiser in Houston. He, too, is obviously ultra-intelligent. He's clearly passionate, a risk-taker. He seems more stately than Jerry Brown, who was in fact nicknamed Governor Moonbeam when he served as governor of California from '75 to '83.

When Obama entered the room, the electricity bumped up several amperes. Like Brown, Obama spoke like a real person, a real smart person. He's aiming his campaign at those people who have grown cynical and disenfranchised regarding American politics over the past howevermanyyears. (That would be me.) He spoke succinctly but powerfully about health care, education and energy, three hot issues, surely. It's easy to sound off about these things. But I found myself thinking "yes! exactly!" several times while listening to him. I can't remember the last time I felt that way while listening to a politician.

I don't know if he'll win the nomination or not; however, I'm so glad he's put his self in the running. Finally. Someone courageous, intelligent, kind and stately, yes, someone presidential.

Happy Birthday Baby

Two years ago, Clara was born by C-section. She was due on March 5, but because of some difficulties I had with low amniotic fluid during the last months of pregnancy, she came out on February 21 instead. The safe zones for amniotic fluid fall between 5 and 25. At around month 7, my fluid had fallen to 11. She and I had to be monitored by ultrasound every two weeks until she was born. On the morning of her birth, I saw my OB, who checked to see if my cervix was dialated. It wasn't. "I'll see you soon, I suppose," she said.

That same morning, I saw my perinatalist, who was located on the Woman's Hospital of Texas campus, too. She measured my fluid and kept quiet the duration. "My OB says I'll be having the baby next week sometime, probably," I said, making conversation.

"Oh you better have it before then," she said. "You're fluid's at 5."

"Like when?" I asked.

"Like today," she said.

I looked at David. It was a Monday morning. The previous Friday, I had said goodbye to my teacher friends because I felt like the baby was going to come at any moment, and I didn't want it to be while I was teaching my Sophomore English Lit. class. "Fine," I told the doctor.

And so it was. So very, very fine.

Happy Birthday, Clara. I love you.

1986

Francie Calfo and Christa Forster

Bigger, Fatter, NOT Better

It pains me to note that the Fisher Price Little People I played with as a child were a lot sexier than the ones my daughter plays with now. It seems that Fisher Price is currently crafting their toys to reflect a more realistic America: multi-cultural and fatter than ever. Fisher Price fashions the new Little People out of plastic instead of wood, and they have them wearing hideous outfits and carrying things like cell phones and backpacks.

Here are the Little People I played with:





Just look at the 1960's mama's figure: currrvey.

And the new ones that my daughter plays with:






I almost spent $144 on a huge lot of vintage Little People, including the house, the school, the barn and the garage, but then I stopped myself because what if my daughter LIKES the new ones?

My walk down memory lane on Ebay rustled up this baby: The Kenner Tree House, featuring the Tree Tots. Mem-OH-ries! I'd love to get one of these, but they're fetching the big bucks.

It's Not Cable, It's Network TV

Tonight David and I watched the last hour of Prime Suspect: the Last Witness. We missed the first hour because we were watching Brothers and Sisters, the ABC hit written by playwright John Robin Baitz. Brothers and Sisters trumps any other TV Sunday nights at our house, not the least because of the great cast, including Sally Fields, Calista Flockhart, Rachel Griffiths and Rob Lowe. But really it's the writing that rocks. Tonight's show featured the word "slattern" and when was the last time you heard that word on prime time? Or saw two guys making out? On network, mind you.

I first saw Prime Suspect in 1991 on PBS. 15 years ago. Wow. I remember being stunned by how much it thrilled me to watch it. I fell in love with Helen Mirren as Detective Jane Tennyson, the policewoman of Scotland Yard who solves serial murder mysteries while having to deal with sexist B.S. from her male comrades. I'm so glad that she's being lauded now by the media: the New Yorker article, the cover of the New York Times Magazine. She deserves it royally.

Favorite School Teachers

Mrs. Hinton, 1st grade
Sr. Grace, 2nd grade
Sr. Mary Roch, 3rd grade
Mrs. Monahan, 6 grade
Sr. Noreen, 5th grade
Sr. Alexandra, 7th grade
Sr. Mary Martin, 8th grade
Mr. Dye, Algebra II/Trigonometry
Mr. Mohit, Math Analysis
Mrs. Berkshire, 9th grade English
Mr. Victor, 12th grade English AP
Mr. Bob Hoffman, Social Science
Mr. Perry, Choir Director
Renee Lacouage, Voice teacher
Dr. Carothers, Romanticism
Dr. Gail Wronsky, Poetry Workshop 101
Robert Reichle, Literary Theory
Jaime Stover, Dance Exercise, Yoga
Father Mike, SJ, Psychology and Hermeneutics
Paul Salamunovich, LMU Choral Director
Dr. Linda Bannister, Stylistics
Adam Zagajewski, Poetry Workshop and Modern Thought
Ed Hirsch, Poetry Workshop and Contemporary American Poetry
Dr. Sidyney Berger, Acting and Directing Theory
Rosellen Brown, Non-Fiction Workshop

First Poem

I began writing when I was about seven. I clearly remember composing my first poem while riding my bike one afternoon before dinner.

It was a typical California day: beautiful. The late afternoon sun bathed the San Juan Capistrano valley with a golden hue that made everything look heartbreaking. When the sun set over the ocean, the Western sky burnt orange, turning the hills into black silhouettes of themselves. To the east, indigo intensified the stars, the planets, the moon. I had no idea how lucky I was to live amidst such natural beauty. But I could feel the beauty in my body as I lived within it, and my body sang about it without even trying.

As I rode my bike, the pedals provided a rhythm to which I found myself setting words about birds, sky, leaves, god, flowers, heart, love, loneliness and loss. I remember being surprised by the way the poem was coming to me, fully formed as they say. It felt new and strange and definitely like a gift, and I pedaled home as fast as I could to write it down on a piece of paper so as not to lose it.

I don't know what happened to the poem after I wrote it down, but the memory of writing it sticks with me as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.

HOURS

The young man beneath the jacaranda walked home
finally because he had hunger.

Walnuts still fell each spring in the school yard.

The vicar ordered new stones for the cathedral.

Dodo died.

The sewage-flooded shores
of Southern California
were swept by children
who wanted to cure the sea.

Seven hours ago, a woman
sat in the dark, watching
a wedding and a funeral,

lovers everywhere rose from bed --

some of them wept; some devoured
bits of their dreams in windows
that faced the sea; some cursed
the dividing hour between
their toil and their taking-away,
lit a cigarette and drug
in smoke to kill time.

--1994

Best Worst Valentine

Years ago now (thank god!) I was dating a man who was the best worst boyfriend I ever had. He was handsome, smart, talented, and MEAN. One Valentine's day, he completely failed to give me any kind of special love: no card, no gift, no thoughtful meal, no nothing. As I sat with him at the kitchen table after giving him a card with lightning bolts raining down on a Southwestern landscape (I thought it was a symbol of our electrical chemistry; it might as well have been the harbinger of our going up in smoke), he droned on about what a lame holiday it was, how it was a holiday crafted by Hallmark, that whole nine-yard cliché.

I mean who the hell cares if it's a holiday created by a card company? It's still an opportunity to let your loved one know you love him or her. You don't have to buy a hallmark card to do so. And furthermore, I don't even think the Hallmark part rings true; it's just an excuse for lovers who don't really love. It's an excuse for haters.

So I'm sitting in our kitchen, crying because I've tried to make the day somewhat special -- the card, the special meal -- and he hasn't even bothered to say "Happy Valentine's Day" and give me a kiss, and I think to myself, "this is the last straw. This guy is SHIT;" still, it takes another five months for me to extricate myself from his cheating heart. And I'm crying hard because I feel his cold heart growing colder. So I drive, snot streaming down my face, to Fiesta -- the supermarket around the corner. I'm getting a bottle of wine in which to drown my sorrow. In the checkout line, I can't even look at the checker because my eyes are buried underneath my swollen eye sockets. I can only stare down at the check-writing platform and wait for my transaction to be over. Tears fall from my face to the platform, despite my best efforts to keep them in.

Suddenly, a red rose appears in my peripheral vision. I suck my snot back into my nose and look up to see the store manager extending a long stem red rose toward me. "Happy Valentine's Day," he says. He hands me the rose. "For you."

I break into a sob so pitiful three checkout lanes stop their transactions to stare at me.

I tried to thank the manager, but my heart broke so loudly I couldn't muster any words. I left the store, hyperventilating, holding the rose, completely wrecked by the fact that I'd received more kindness from a stranger than I did from my own so-called boyfriend.

Best Worst Valentine's Day EVER.

Grammar, C-

Today I actually used the word sensitiver. I told the Romanian woman who was waxing me, "redheads are sensitiver to pain." I used to be an English teacher. There's a part of me that could give a flying fuck about grammar, the same part who loves to use words like sensitiver.

The majority of me, however, loves the grammar.

Not Another Jedi Mind Trick

My father is fond of buying American Indian jewelry for me. Unless I'm with him to pick it out, it's usually hideous: kokopelli earrings with multicolored stone insets or something like that. When I visit my family in California over the winter holidays, sometimes he takes me to his favorite jewelry store in SJC, Zia Jewelry, to let me pick out my own stuff. One of my favorite gifts in recent years was a necklace, earring and bracelet set made from sterling silver and white opal: simple earrings, a "tennis" bracelet with rectangular white opal baguettes, and a silver ouroboros inlaid with white opal.

One winter night, I wore the necklace and bracelet to a theater show at the high school where I used to teach. After I got home from the show, David and I were sitting on the green couch, chatting about our day. He looked at my necklace and said, "That really is a pretty necklace."

"Thanks," I said, unconsciously feeling for the bracelet on my wrist. It wasn't there! I ran down to my car and looked to see if it had fallen off while I was driving home. Retracing my steps from the car to the front door, I replayed the entire evening in my mind, desperate to pinpoint the moment the bracelet had fallen off. I called the restaurant where I'd met David and his mom for dinner before heading off to the theater by myself. They were cleaning up and hadn't found it. I figured it must have fallen off in the theater. I would go look for it tomorrow.

That night in bed, I fretted over the loss of my bracelet. My father and I have a difficult relationship, and the gifts he gives me are loaded with complex feelings and meanings for me. In fact, I felt so bereft about the bracelet's loss that I started thinking to myself, "if I can't deal with the loss of this present from my dad, how in the world am I going to deal with the loss of my dad when he dies?" I know; it's morbid, but it's how my mind was working at the moment.

I turned to David and said, "My molecules are still on that bracelet. I'm gonna stay connected to them and I'm gonna find that bracelet."

He laughed and said, "Okay."

The next day, I went to teach my first two classes, waiting until my free third period to head toward the theater. On my way across campus, I told myself that I was going to follow the energy of my molecules. I would just let my body go where it was pulled. I had to cross the street to get to the middle school campus. When I got to the parking lot by the theater, I peeled away from the theater toward the lot where I'd parked the night before. In the middle of the parking slots was a small grassy esplanade. With a surety I cannot explain, I walked to the esplanade, took a couple steps on the grass, stopped, looked down, and at my feet lay my bracelet. When I saw it, I almost passed out. MY BRACELET! I could not believe that I'd found it not by "looking" but by "feeling." I picked it up, ran back across the street to the high school campus, straight to my office, where I tried to convey my sense of wonder to my two office mates.

They stared at me as if I were crazy. Given all my babbling about molecules and energy and finding-by-feeling, I can understand; nevertheless, it was a true, real, and mind-expanding experience for me, and it amplified my respect for psychic abilities, my own and other people's.

Girls Who Wear Glasses

When I was little, I strained to have blurry vision because I wanted to wear glasses, specifically black horn-rimmed ones. I spent 10 minutes a day crossing my eyes on purpose, hoping that as a result the optometrist would tell my mom that I needed glasses, stat. Now that I do need them, and do wear them -- still for reading only, but I could (and should) use them regularly -- I strain to focus without them, spending ten minutes a day doing eye exercises in hope that I might stall an ensuing blindness.

On Catharsis

David and I tried to go see "Volver" tonight, but it was sold out. We went to the House of Te instead, in the old Washateria on Fairview and Woodhead. The House of Te was offering free mah-jong lessons, and a variety of people, of various ages -- from a 13 year boy to a 45 year old mom -- were sitting around a large table learning how to play. We did not partake of that special treat. We sat in a corner by the window, drank our tea and talked.

I talked about how getting out of the house (my mom is visiting, hence babysitting) shifts my consciousness so that I can feel my stress in a whole different way: I get this jumpy, panicky feeling, as the stress rises through my limbs to my chest area. A feeling of relief follows as I notice the stress leaving, evaporating from my body

"Is it an enjoyable feeling?" David asked.

"It's cathartic," I said.

When we got home, my mom was watching "The Proposition." The Proposition happens to be one of my favorite movies ever, and David and I arrived home near the ending, one of the most awesome endings ever. I sat down with my mom and watched.

"Why do you like this movie so much?" she said.

"It's an allegory," I said. "Shhhhhhhh."

If you've seen the movie, then you know that the ending is like a Flannery O'Connor short story ending. The screenplay for "The Proposition" was written by Nick Cave, and the soundtrack was, too, which is why the music adds as much meaning to the story as the writing and the imagery do.

As my mom headed off for bed, I asked her if she liked it. She said "Yeah, it's a pretty good movie...what's the allegory?"

"It's about good versus evil, both evil that looks like evil and evil that doesn't look like evil. The last words the main characters, Morris and Martha, speak...." Well, I don't want to give away the ending. If I did, I'd ruin the catharsis*, and I think everyone should see this movie because of said catharsis and the message said catharsis viscerally punches into the heart.

After my mom left the room, I got up to get a drink of water, and on my way to the kitchen, I thought about the other movies I've loved because they were classically cathartic. Here are five that come quickly to mind. Please add to the list if you like.

The Proposition
Open Water
Raise the Red Lantern
A Praire Home Companion (lighter, but cathartic all the same)
Little Miss Sunshine (boffo!)

*earlier tonight, I described catharsis during my conversation with David as empathetic horror. And yes it felt good. But good because it's a release of horror, horror that I carry inside me, horror that falls under the umbrella of Stress. The feeling is one of release.

Here is how dictionary.com defines catharsis:

1.A purifying or figurative cleansing of the emotions, especially pity and fear, described by Aristotle as an effect of tragic drama on its audience.

2. A release of emotional tension, as after an overwhelming experience, that restores or refreshes the spirit.

Hot Mama

My parents divorced in 1987, but before they did, they were married 21 years. Their wedding anniversary was October 3, and sometimes on that day my mother would put on her wedding dress and greet my father in it when he came home. I remember one time watching her put on her makeup, do her hair. Then she put on her wedding dress. "Ha!" she crowed, "it still fits! How do you like THEM apples?"

My mother used sayings like "how do you like them apples," and she would use them at weird times. She'd say "Brother, can you spare a dime?" Only she'd say it like, "Oh Brother! Can you spare a dime!" Like "Geeze! Get a load of that!"

One of her more obscure sayings -- "Are you nervous, Harry?" -- she'd use at times when no one was nervous and no one was Harry.

My mom is a self described girl-next-door type. Her name, Mary Jane, might be the most girl-next-store name a girl can be named.

To me, of course, she's one of the most beautiful women in the world. All the beneficent superlatives apply: most generous, most caring, affectionate, loving, sweet, funny, supportive, inspring women in the world.

Thank you, Universe.

Homage to Garcia Lorca

20 Favorite Songs from the 70s

My Sharona, the Knack
Forever Young, Bob Dylan
You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go, Bob Dylan
Turn to Stone, ELO
Surrender, Cheap Trick
Heart of Glass, Blondie
Buckets of Rain, Bob Dylan
Help Me, Joni Mitchell
Blue, Joni Mitchell
(Our Love) Don't Throw It All Away, Andy Gibb
Boogie Wonderland, Earth, Wind and Fire
Sultans Of Swing, Dire Straits
Chuck E's in Love, Rickie Lee Jones
I Was Made For Lovin' You, Kiss
Don't Bring Me Down, Electric Light Orchestra
Hot Child In The City, Nick Gilder
I Go Crazy, Paul Davis
Boogie Oogie Oogie, A Taste Of Honey
Here You Come Again, Dolly Parton
You're the One that I Want, John Travolta and Olivia Newton John

Blue Thunder

When I turned 16, my dad gave me my first car: a 1965 Ford Ranchero. It had been the delivery truck for the NAPA Auto Parts store he owned with his brother. When he came home one afternoon and told me my new car was in the driveway, I nearly broke my leg running outside.

I don't know what I was expecting, but I certainly wasn't expecting a canary yellow truck with fat racing stripes running down the bed, and a giant, plastic NAPA hat perched atop the cab. When I saw it, I started crying.

"What's the matter?" my dad said, acting all surprised.

"Is that really it?" I said. I imagined the laughter that would follow me in and out of the parking lot of Capistrano Valley High School.

"Well goddamn, Christa," he said. "If you don't want a car, I won't give it to you."

"I DO want a car," I said. "But...."

"But what?" he said.

"But I can't drive that car, dad."

"Why not?" he said.

"Everyone will laugh at me," I said. Tears welled up in my eyes.

"Okay," he said, "I'll take the hat off."


In the end, he had the truck redone for me, the body painted cobalt blue, the cab white. He redid the interior, too. After I left for college, my brother Marco drove it.

My dad named the car Blue Thunder, because, he said, we were always storming around town in it. In truth, it was probably the coolest car in my high school parking lot, although I didn't know it at the time.

Here's a picture of the 1965 Ford Ranchero:

Long Ago and Far Away

American Duty

Every Sunday afternoon, and every Monday night in my house, the white noise of NFL football served as background to our playing, our doing homework, our fighting with one another. There was no negotiating with my father about watching something else on Monday nights. For example, Little House on the Prarie aired on Mondays, and as we owned only one television, I often wound up in tears because my father wouldn't let me watch my show.

I hated football.

Now whenever I hear the roar of a televised crowd, the clacking of helmets and shoulder pads, the urgency of the sports commentators, I feel nostalgia for my childhood, for those afternoons spent playing keep away on the front lawn with my brothers on Sunday afternoons. Every 15 minutes, they'd yell "Dad!? What's the score?" through the screened windows into the family room, where my dad relaxed on the couch, reading the paper and watching a game.

Today, Superbowl Sunday, I did my American duty: our family went to a Superbowl Sunday party. The hostess, my friend Diana, is a Prince fan, hence her justification for hosting the party. I, however, felt relief that we had somewhere to go. As much as I am indifferent to the game, there is a visceral comfort in participating in the rituals of this day: the salty snacks, the half-hearted banter, the cold beer, the half-time show, the much-anticipated commercials.

Tomorrow, NFL football will fade back into the realm of meaninglessness for me. But today, it matters; I care; and my team is winning. Hoooo Yeah!

Freedom Train

My First Poet

When I was seven, my interest in reading migrated from the bookshelves in my room to the bookshelves in our hallway, where my mom and dad kept their books, mostly antiques handed down from generation to generation, books about land surveys and war correspondences. My dad read nothing but the daily newspaper, Sunset Magazine, Time and Playboy. My mom liked John Jakes or John Jakes rip-off novels. However, she did have a small cache of literary books in the hall bookshelves, including a first edition of Robert Frost's IN THE CLEARING, and a smallish anthology of Modern Poetry.

The anthology measured 4"x 6"x3", perfect proportions for my child-hands. I appropriated the book and read it everywhere, at the dinner table, at the bathroom counter, in my bed, on the floor in the living room near the fireplace, outside on the lawn, in the white oak tree, in the station wagon on the freeway. After about a week, my mom noticed that I was attached to the book, so she read me her favorite poem from it: e.e. cummings' "Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town."

I'm still not sure if e.e. cummings became my first favorite poet because my mom loved him or because I loved him in my own right. When I was in graduate school, nobody ever talked about e.e. cummings, as if he were some sort of eccentric carny who happened to have published a boatload of wacky poems. I kept him close to my chest, rarely mentioning him in the company of other students, guarding him in my heart's shrine. After graduate school, I read him again every day. When I lived on Pinedale, I taped one of his poems to my bathroom cabinet, the one I looked at whenever I sat down to use the toilet. Everyday I read his poem like a prayer. Everyday I blessed him for blessing me.

XAIPE, 65

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

The Parent Trap

Earlier today I carried my sleeping 5-month old to his bed for a nap, thinking as I gazed at his sleeping face how unutterably dear he is to me. Looking at him, I felt ineffable warmth as I held him in the security of my arms. Then I returned to the family room, where I found my 23-month old daughter woofing down a bunch of tiny white teething tablets she had managed to wrestle out of their childproof bottle. As I screamed for her to Stop! Eating! Them! She shoved them quicker into her mouth; matter of fact, she raced me to them as I frantically plucked them off the floor. In a span of one minute, I’d gone from embracing mother love to hysterical mother panic at the thought that my daughter might die from ingesting – how many?!! – teething tablets. Poison Control assured me she wouldn’t die, although she might get really, really hyper from all the sugar in those Little Teethers.

“Momma,” said Michael from Poison Control, “I’ve had kids eat 100 of those things without any change in their behavior. Do you think she ate 100?”

“No,” I said.

“What’s she doing right now?” he said.

“Playing.”

“Okay. Call me back if anything changes,” he said.

At best, parenthood is paradoxical. Life and death share the same wall, a thin wall, almost made of mosquito netting. Everyday as a parent, I hold in my heart feelings of security and vulnerability simultaneously; the existential confusion this emotional state can cause is enough to drive a person crazy – and has!

Let's talk about Sylvia Plath for a moment. Everybody knows who she is, right? THE BELL JAR -- which I haven't read. I have read her poetry; ARIEL, for example. Sylvia Plath was indeed mad, with rage at least, as anyone whose read her poetry can attest to. Perhaps most people know that she killed herself by sticking her head in an oven, leaving behind two children and a philandering husband. Perhaps she is one of those people who "should never have become a parent in the first place," a phrase I've heard said about other people too often. Because if she is one of those people, then perhaps I am, too; because there have been days since becoming a mother when, let me assure you, I have known the desire to stick my head in an oven and MAKE THE MADNESS END.

But then I'd miss out on seeing my children everyday, and that would be sadder than being dead.