My friend Raquelita, aka Pinky Hurricane, started a blog that I think is totally groovy. It's called My Pointy Ears Are Up. Check it out if you have the time.
Pinky and I met in San Francisco in 1989. We bothed worked at the Exploratorium there, the Museum of Science and Technology that Frank Oppenheimer (the lesser known brother of Robert) founded in the 1970s. What a great job it was, too. Not only did I meet one of my dearest and most favorite friends, but also going to work was like going to play on the playground everyday. There was one exhibit called "the tactile dome," a geodesic dome designed by August Coppola (another lesser known bro) that sat inside the Exploratorium and was open for "tours." A tour meant you showed up at a prescribed time -- reservations were required -- entered a pitch black atmosphere where you made your way through entirely by using your sense of touch. There were chutes and ladders inside this thing that you had to climb up and then fall down (without warning!). My favorite chute was the rope ladder one climbed up only to fall down at the top of it into a bin of pinto beans.
There were rumors of Exploratorium employees going through the dome after hours, in the nude and tripping on acid. I never did, but I wish I had!
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Anti-Anti
By now most everyone knows about the danger of anti-biotics: that if one overuses them, one builds up resistance to the very thing one was trying to resist -- bacterial infections -- and the infections ensue with a BRING IT ON! attitude. This bring-it-on attitude is the phenomenon known around the hypochondriac universe as the "super virus."
It's also big news that anti-bacterial soap is bad for you.
Hahahahahahahahaha. Joke's on us, I guess.
Anyway, Clara has been on anti-biotics for an ear infection that cropped up over a week ago. When I told her that I'd rather not put Clara on antibiotics, the doctor said it was better to be safe than sorry. "You never know what it might develop into," the doc said. What am I supposed to say to that?
I'm not even sure Clara is "on" anti-biotics since whenever I try to give her the teaspoonful of Amoxicillin twice a day, 3/4 of it ends up on her onsie, because she spits it all out, which sucks because now all her clothes have pink Amoxicillin stain swaths all over them.
It's an exercise in futility -- this medicating against the unknown -- and I just hope my daughter isn't developing resistance to that which is supposed to help her.
It's also big news that anti-bacterial soap is bad for you.
Hahahahahahahahaha. Joke's on us, I guess.
Anyway, Clara has been on anti-biotics for an ear infection that cropped up over a week ago. When I told her that I'd rather not put Clara on antibiotics, the doctor said it was better to be safe than sorry. "You never know what it might develop into," the doc said. What am I supposed to say to that?
I'm not even sure Clara is "on" anti-biotics since whenever I try to give her the teaspoonful of Amoxicillin twice a day, 3/4 of it ends up on her onsie, because she spits it all out, which sucks because now all her clothes have pink Amoxicillin stain swaths all over them.
It's an exercise in futility -- this medicating against the unknown -- and I just hope my daughter isn't developing resistance to that which is supposed to help her.
Friday, September 02, 2005
There But for the Grace...
There is a serious fucked up psychic energy swirling around the region. A hurricane of stress -- category 5. We certainly don't have to be reading and constantly watching the network and cable news in order to feel viscerally the morass of tragedy that thousands and thousands of people are suffering through right now. Or not suffering through, because maybe they've just died.
My normally angelic daughter Clara feels this fucked up energy, too; she's projectile vomiting, screaming because of ear pain, and passing out from stress.
Calamity creeps into us through our skin cells, our nostrils, our eardrums. Our subconscious sponges it up. And we're just sitting here: SO FUCKING LUCKY.
What to do, what to do. Volunteer, donate, take in people who need shelter. Pray, if that's your inclination. My primary inclination is to keep these people in mind and keep asking the Universe to work in their favor -- let them have health, safety, peace, love, joy. Those last two requests -- love and joy -- may seem like luxuries right now, but when better to be praying that the refugees may have these things? In my mind it's the best thing I can do for them while they're sitting in a hot school bus, in a line of hot school busses, in a concrete field of diesel fumes, waiting to enter the Astrodome, where they'll be living for the next several months next to thousands and thousands of other traumatized people. LOVE and JOY are things that we can't hand them in cans, can't drop off in boxes or donate over paypal.
Even though I'm not "religious," I believe in the power of prayer. Prayer is another way of saying "mind over matter," which I firmly believe works. It has in my own life over and over. Not 100% of the time, but then nothing works 100% of the time, does it.
George Wwwwwhatthefuckiswrongwithhim Bush is, as usual, at a loss for how to act in the best interest for the people he's supposed to protect. So it's up to us.
Do what you can do, but consider asking the universe for help, too. Please.
My normally angelic daughter Clara feels this fucked up energy, too; she's projectile vomiting, screaming because of ear pain, and passing out from stress.
Calamity creeps into us through our skin cells, our nostrils, our eardrums. Our subconscious sponges it up. And we're just sitting here: SO FUCKING LUCKY.
What to do, what to do. Volunteer, donate, take in people who need shelter. Pray, if that's your inclination. My primary inclination is to keep these people in mind and keep asking the Universe to work in their favor -- let them have health, safety, peace, love, joy. Those last two requests -- love and joy -- may seem like luxuries right now, but when better to be praying that the refugees may have these things? In my mind it's the best thing I can do for them while they're sitting in a hot school bus, in a line of hot school busses, in a concrete field of diesel fumes, waiting to enter the Astrodome, where they'll be living for the next several months next to thousands and thousands of other traumatized people. LOVE and JOY are things that we can't hand them in cans, can't drop off in boxes or donate over paypal.
Even though I'm not "religious," I believe in the power of prayer. Prayer is another way of saying "mind over matter," which I firmly believe works. It has in my own life over and over. Not 100% of the time, but then nothing works 100% of the time, does it.
George Wwwwwhatthefuckiswrongwithhim Bush is, as usual, at a loss for how to act in the best interest for the people he's supposed to protect. So it's up to us.
Do what you can do, but consider asking the universe for help, too. Please.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Heaven Begins at Home
I am a certified minister of the Universal Life Church. My friend Joel, himself a Universal Life minister, ordained me so that I could minister his marriage to Sharon. I'm about to perform my second wedding ceremony, and I'm looking forward to it.
Over the internet, I was certified as a legitimate UCL minister, which meant that I could, if I so wanted, start my own church -- either an internet church or a bricks and mortar version. I laughed, "Ha, ha, ha, wouldn't that be funny -- me with my very own church!" I closed the email from the ULC and went on to the next email, which was a request for a letter of recommendation from a student's mom. Her salutation was "Dear Christ."
I had a good friend in graduate school who for a while believed I was the second coming. She was diagnosed with manic depression and temporary schizophrenia soon after this belief blossomed, but nonetheless, SHE WAS CONVINCED.
The other day, headed south on Highway 59, I passed the new Lakewood Church in what was formerly the Compaq Center -- once the home of the legendary Houston Rockets. Christians now flock to the refurbished arena, where their shepherd, Joel Osteen, leads them in their worship of a "God of Restoration" (from the www.joelosteen.com). As I drove past, I thought, that guy Osteen is making bookoo bucks. My next thought was, I could do that, start my own church.
L. Ron did it. J.C. did it. L. Ron Hubbard said the way to make millions is to start one's own religion.
I admit now: I want to make millions. Nay, squillions.
But Jesus didn't necessarily want to get rich. He hung out with the poor folk. I hang out with poor folk too, come to think of it: artists and theater types, teachers and writers. J.C.'s earthly dad was a carpenter. Mine was a NAPA auto parts salesman.
The Universal Life Church isn't about Jesus, though, which is fine by me, because I'm not really about Jesus either. I am about divinity, though. And my lapsed Catholic soul DIGS the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe. I choose to believe that there is a greater power, a higher power (I need to say it here: I'm not an AA advocate). I consider that higher power a sort of spiritual network -- an ethereal intelligence, a circular cosmic order. This higher order is the sum of all the individual consciousnesses and energies in the universe, which is why I believe it's important for people to be nice to one another, that being nice to one another and offering love and peace to one another is, in deed, heaven on earth.
Over the internet, I was certified as a legitimate UCL minister, which meant that I could, if I so wanted, start my own church -- either an internet church or a bricks and mortar version. I laughed, "Ha, ha, ha, wouldn't that be funny -- me with my very own church!" I closed the email from the ULC and went on to the next email, which was a request for a letter of recommendation from a student's mom. Her salutation was "Dear Christ."
I had a good friend in graduate school who for a while believed I was the second coming. She was diagnosed with manic depression and temporary schizophrenia soon after this belief blossomed, but nonetheless, SHE WAS CONVINCED.
The other day, headed south on Highway 59, I passed the new Lakewood Church in what was formerly the Compaq Center -- once the home of the legendary Houston Rockets. Christians now flock to the refurbished arena, where their shepherd, Joel Osteen, leads them in their worship of a "God of Restoration" (from the www.joelosteen.com). As I drove past, I thought, that guy Osteen is making bookoo bucks. My next thought was, I could do that, start my own church.
L. Ron did it. J.C. did it. L. Ron Hubbard said the way to make millions is to start one's own religion.
I admit now: I want to make millions. Nay, squillions.
But Jesus didn't necessarily want to get rich. He hung out with the poor folk. I hang out with poor folk too, come to think of it: artists and theater types, teachers and writers. J.C.'s earthly dad was a carpenter. Mine was a NAPA auto parts salesman.
The Universal Life Church isn't about Jesus, though, which is fine by me, because I'm not really about Jesus either. I am about divinity, though. And my lapsed Catholic soul DIGS the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe. I choose to believe that there is a greater power, a higher power (I need to say it here: I'm not an AA advocate). I consider that higher power a sort of spiritual network -- an ethereal intelligence, a circular cosmic order. This higher order is the sum of all the individual consciousnesses and energies in the universe, which is why I believe it's important for people to be nice to one another, that being nice to one another and offering love and peace to one another is, in deed, heaven on earth.
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
For All the People Suffering Because of Hurricane Katrina
May you have health.
May you have safety.
May you have peace.
May you have love.
May you have joy.
May you have safety.
May you have peace.
May you have love.
May you have joy.
Clara Has A Cold
She does, and there is mucous everywhere, all over her face. All over me. I watched David kiss her hands this morning and shrieked: BE CAREFUL! SHE'S A GERM FACTORY!
Her whining has penetrated my soul, and I can't remember a world where there was no whining.
Last night the cry/whine escalated into a mysterious wail that would not cease unless I were dancing to Wilco and Billy Bragg's Mermaid Avenue. I tried a couple other CDs, like the brilliant bossanova album Elis and Tom, but she wailed even louder. Since it was late at night, I couldn't dance around to Wilco and Billy Bragg for too long because I was tired, and David was in bed because I thought I could do better than he could at calming her down -- breasts and all that -- so he wasn't any help. I finally gave her some baby tylenol, thinking she had a headache or something. As soon as the tylenol was in her mouth, she fell asleep, like she just KNEW it was gonna make everything better.
Drugs. What else can I say?
This morning I called the doctor to make sure that I shouldn't be bringing her in, to be reassured that this is only a cold and will pass like all colds do. The nurse who returned my call -- my new friend Sherry -- said that yes, I do need to bring her in, because she may have an ear infection.
S H I T.
I want to explain to Sherry that I can't just be bringing her in for every little thing because, according to my new insurance, I only get four doctor's visits a year, but I keep it to myself because Clara's ears are super important and her health is worth anything.
But I want to take this opportunity to reaffirm how much I HATE THE AMERICAN HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY, and point people to this recent article by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker: THE MORAL-HAZARD MYTH
Her whining has penetrated my soul, and I can't remember a world where there was no whining.
Last night the cry/whine escalated into a mysterious wail that would not cease unless I were dancing to Wilco and Billy Bragg's Mermaid Avenue. I tried a couple other CDs, like the brilliant bossanova album Elis and Tom, but she wailed even louder. Since it was late at night, I couldn't dance around to Wilco and Billy Bragg for too long because I was tired, and David was in bed because I thought I could do better than he could at calming her down -- breasts and all that -- so he wasn't any help. I finally gave her some baby tylenol, thinking she had a headache or something. As soon as the tylenol was in her mouth, she fell asleep, like she just KNEW it was gonna make everything better.
Drugs. What else can I say?
This morning I called the doctor to make sure that I shouldn't be bringing her in, to be reassured that this is only a cold and will pass like all colds do. The nurse who returned my call -- my new friend Sherry -- said that yes, I do need to bring her in, because she may have an ear infection.
S H I T.
I want to explain to Sherry that I can't just be bringing her in for every little thing because, according to my new insurance, I only get four doctor's visits a year, but I keep it to myself because Clara's ears are super important and her health is worth anything.
But I want to take this opportunity to reaffirm how much I HATE THE AMERICAN HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY, and point people to this recent article by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker: THE MORAL-HAZARD MYTH
Monday, August 29, 2005
Cursive
As a graduate of K-8 Catholic education, my best subject when I was 13 was Penmanship. And I knew how to diagram a sentence like nobody's business. The nuns, fierce Franciscans, were all about handwriting, diagramming complex sentences, and teaching us alternatives to cussing. "When you feel upset, just say MICHIGAN!" suggested Sr. Mary Alexandra.
Every week in 7th grade, Sr. Alexandra would make us practice our handwriting. After 30 to 45 minutes of working on our cursive, she'd pick the three best examples and send them to Sr. Doreen, the principal, to have her judge the VERY best. I got chosen as one of the three often, along with Ya Lin Chu and Gregory Zenzina. Periodically, Sr. Doreen stuck the gold star on my sheaf.
From the moment I learned the Palmer Method in the second grade, I'd been "the one to watch" when it came to cursive. I had been writing for years -- loops and loops of jibberish -- but once I learned the actual letters, I could communicate things. More importantly, those beautiful letters felt so good to write. I practiced X over and over -- two sixes having sex, almost 69ing. Q was a mystery: why was it like a 2? Or a backwards L? Those things had nothing seemingly in common with one another.
Over the years, I spent hours trying out different ways to write letters cursively. When I noticed that a friend's G was impressively formed, I'd absorb what I liked about her G into my own G. I wrote lots of notes to my friends, not because I had so much to say but because I loved the act of writing them. Most of them were along the lines of "What's up?" Or "Do you like John DiGiovanni? He likes you."
In sixth grade, a little black cloud in a plaid uniform jumper, named Ya Lin Chu, joined our class. Oh, did she rain on my parade with her exotic and perfect penmanship! Ya Lin, just off the boat from Viet Nam, wrote in an inimitable style. Try as hard as I might, I could not mimic her script. Soon enough, the class thank-you notes to guest speakers were being hand-written by her, where before they'd been my domain, practically my birthright. I had real trouble containing my jealously and being nice to Ya Lin. But I did my best. After all, she was an immigrant who had just crossed the Pacific Ocean in a LIFEBOAT, for god's sake. I seethed and scribbled for hours at night, consciously judging whether I was as impressed by my own handwriting as I was by Ya Lin's. I was not. I'd been surpassed. I had to make peace with being one of the best handwriters in middle school instead of THE best.
Recently, I've been involved in a discussion about the relevance of learning cursive in elementary school. There are some people who argue that it's an unnecessary skill these days, given that most children are now learning keyboarding as early as fifth grade. Many people curse cursive because they were never good at it. Probably they felt weak in it because they were taught to learn it AFTER learning block printing, which is an unnatural order given the way the brain functions develop.
I've been reading a book called Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All In Your Head, by Carla Hannaford, Ph.D., and she has this to say about learning cursive:
"By age four or five children naturally love to 'write' stories -- very elaborate stories. They usually write in a pretend cursive style, because they are mimicking grown-up writing, and because they enjoy the natural rhythm and flow of it. This process is anchoring learning in a holistic way and could be an excellent point of departure for new learning....[An] unnatural challenge has to do with learning to print block letters as the first step in writing. Printing is a highly linear process that takes us away from the more continuous rhythmic flow of language, both as it is experienced in the mind and as it is expressed through the hand -- as in cursive script....At [five years old] children have to work very hard at printing since it defies the natural development of brain functions. After age seven, when the brain is developed enough to accommodate the discrete and linear operations necessary for printing, we then teach them cursive. It's a crazy game that only serves to maintain high stress levels in the child and leads to 'learned helplessness'" (Hannaford 84-85).
Maybe my excellent cursive skills have something to do with what David calls my "teacher attitude," by which he means not the fact that I am indeed a teacher, but rather that I have tendency to order him around and act like I always know what I'm talking about as well as more than he does. Maybe there's a connection. You know how teachers most often have good handwriting? Well maybe the reason they became teachers is BECAUSE they have good handwriting -- they have to help all those helpless people who never learned to master cursive.
Someone needs to do a study on this cursive/know-it-all temperment, stat.
Every week in 7th grade, Sr. Alexandra would make us practice our handwriting. After 30 to 45 minutes of working on our cursive, she'd pick the three best examples and send them to Sr. Doreen, the principal, to have her judge the VERY best. I got chosen as one of the three often, along with Ya Lin Chu and Gregory Zenzina. Periodically, Sr. Doreen stuck the gold star on my sheaf.
From the moment I learned the Palmer Method in the second grade, I'd been "the one to watch" when it came to cursive. I had been writing for years -- loops and loops of jibberish -- but once I learned the actual letters, I could communicate things. More importantly, those beautiful letters felt so good to write. I practiced X over and over -- two sixes having sex, almost 69ing. Q was a mystery: why was it like a 2? Or a backwards L? Those things had nothing seemingly in common with one another.
Over the years, I spent hours trying out different ways to write letters cursively. When I noticed that a friend's G was impressively formed, I'd absorb what I liked about her G into my own G. I wrote lots of notes to my friends, not because I had so much to say but because I loved the act of writing them. Most of them were along the lines of "What's up?" Or "Do you like John DiGiovanni? He likes you."
In sixth grade, a little black cloud in a plaid uniform jumper, named Ya Lin Chu, joined our class. Oh, did she rain on my parade with her exotic and perfect penmanship! Ya Lin, just off the boat from Viet Nam, wrote in an inimitable style. Try as hard as I might, I could not mimic her script. Soon enough, the class thank-you notes to guest speakers were being hand-written by her, where before they'd been my domain, practically my birthright. I had real trouble containing my jealously and being nice to Ya Lin. But I did my best. After all, she was an immigrant who had just crossed the Pacific Ocean in a LIFEBOAT, for god's sake. I seethed and scribbled for hours at night, consciously judging whether I was as impressed by my own handwriting as I was by Ya Lin's. I was not. I'd been surpassed. I had to make peace with being one of the best handwriters in middle school instead of THE best.
Recently, I've been involved in a discussion about the relevance of learning cursive in elementary school. There are some people who argue that it's an unnecessary skill these days, given that most children are now learning keyboarding as early as fifth grade. Many people curse cursive because they were never good at it. Probably they felt weak in it because they were taught to learn it AFTER learning block printing, which is an unnatural order given the way the brain functions develop.
I've been reading a book called Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All In Your Head, by Carla Hannaford, Ph.D., and she has this to say about learning cursive:
"By age four or five children naturally love to 'write' stories -- very elaborate stories. They usually write in a pretend cursive style, because they are mimicking grown-up writing, and because they enjoy the natural rhythm and flow of it. This process is anchoring learning in a holistic way and could be an excellent point of departure for new learning....[An] unnatural challenge has to do with learning to print block letters as the first step in writing. Printing is a highly linear process that takes us away from the more continuous rhythmic flow of language, both as it is experienced in the mind and as it is expressed through the hand -- as in cursive script....At [five years old] children have to work very hard at printing since it defies the natural development of brain functions. After age seven, when the brain is developed enough to accommodate the discrete and linear operations necessary for printing, we then teach them cursive. It's a crazy game that only serves to maintain high stress levels in the child and leads to 'learned helplessness'" (Hannaford 84-85).
Maybe my excellent cursive skills have something to do with what David calls my "teacher attitude," by which he means not the fact that I am indeed a teacher, but rather that I have tendency to order him around and act like I always know what I'm talking about as well as more than he does. Maybe there's a connection. You know how teachers most often have good handwriting? Well maybe the reason they became teachers is BECAUSE they have good handwriting -- they have to help all those helpless people who never learned to master cursive.
Someone needs to do a study on this cursive/know-it-all temperment, stat.
Friday, August 26, 2005
Anti-Social
I get sick -- SICK! -- of society sometimes. When I think about it at all, it sickens me. So I find myself not thinking about society, not thinking about being a citizen in it, most of the time. I sort of operate unconsciously, which is bad in general and, in this case, bad for the environment, I'm sure. Because I don't recycle (crucify me), for example.
If my neighborhood waste managers offered recycling, I would recycle. I have recycled diligently in the past. It's not like I'm completely insensitive to the global warming situation. However, in order to recycle, I have to litter my house with old bottles, cans, cardboard, newspaper (can anyone say R O A C H M A G N E T S), lug it all downstairs in the heat -- and it's insanely hot here most of the year, probably because of the greenhouse gasses; vicious cycle, I know -- to drive to this very hard-to-find recycling center somewhere on Westpark Street or Lane or Whatever.
It doesn't seem like the City of Houston cares very much about my recycling. If they did, they'd offer their citizens those three types of trashcans -- regular waste, green waste and recyclable waste -- like they have in California (yes, I'm a California chauvinist!)
I don't even have to try to complain about something like this; it just comes naturally.
Here are other things about society that sicken me on a fairly regular basis: politics and politicians, noise pollution (especially leaf blowers!), credit card companies, bank charges, pollution, junk mail, bad water quality, noise pollution (Clear Channel Radio), the cost of housing, "fashion", stupid television, traffic, greenhouse gases, oil costs, noise pollution (did Robertson really say that thing about Sizzler?!), ozone holes, ADHD, drug companies, concrete jungles, "quiet genocides," trash, trash, trash everywhere.
I realize that my anti-social attitude makes me part of the problem. I'm conscious of that much, at least.
If my neighborhood waste managers offered recycling, I would recycle. I have recycled diligently in the past. It's not like I'm completely insensitive to the global warming situation. However, in order to recycle, I have to litter my house with old bottles, cans, cardboard, newspaper (can anyone say R O A C H M A G N E T S), lug it all downstairs in the heat -- and it's insanely hot here most of the year, probably because of the greenhouse gasses; vicious cycle, I know -- to drive to this very hard-to-find recycling center somewhere on Westpark Street or Lane or Whatever.
It doesn't seem like the City of Houston cares very much about my recycling. If they did, they'd offer their citizens those three types of trashcans -- regular waste, green waste and recyclable waste -- like they have in California (yes, I'm a California chauvinist!)
I don't even have to try to complain about something like this; it just comes naturally.
Here are other things about society that sicken me on a fairly regular basis: politics and politicians, noise pollution (especially leaf blowers!), credit card companies, bank charges, pollution, junk mail, bad water quality, noise pollution (Clear Channel Radio), the cost of housing, "fashion", stupid television, traffic, greenhouse gases, oil costs, noise pollution (did Robertson really say that thing about Sizzler?!), ozone holes, ADHD, drug companies, concrete jungles, "quiet genocides," trash, trash, trash everywhere.
I realize that my anti-social attitude makes me part of the problem. I'm conscious of that much, at least.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
S H U T U P ! ! !
I'm not sure that there's a noise I hate more than the noise of a leaf blower. The noise is worse than the mounting cries of a colicky baby. Right now it's ridiculously loud on my street in Midtown Houston: there's an 18 wheeler "resting," its generator wheezing, on the curb in front of Zorca's townhouse, a collection of sirens screaming over some misdemeanor or fire somewhere, a leaf blower on MAXIMUM POWER!, and a car alarm going off. And horns -- lots of car horns. This racket completely unnerves me.
I've just been reading about how stress results in the body's becoming vulnerable to disease. This noise creates a mounting stress level in my body. I want to tear that leaf blower person's head off!!
And just like that: the 18 wheeler's gone, the cops or firemen have apprehended the problem, the leaf blower's exchanged his menacing mechanized dragon for the rake (a comforting scrape, scrape against the concrete sidewalk), the car alarm quits, and people drive nicely again.
City living...Urban living, I think it's called now. There's a real estate company in Houston with this name: Urban Living. The agents should record this noise and play it for prospective urban livingites. Just to make sure these people migrating from the suburbs can handle it.
If all the suburbanites are coming into the city, maybe it's time for the urbanites to head for the suburbs.
Then again, I bet there are way more leaf blowers in the suburbs. In fact, I think leaf blowers were invented for the suburbs.
Gah.
I've just been reading about how stress results in the body's becoming vulnerable to disease. This noise creates a mounting stress level in my body. I want to tear that leaf blower person's head off!!
And just like that: the 18 wheeler's gone, the cops or firemen have apprehended the problem, the leaf blower's exchanged his menacing mechanized dragon for the rake (a comforting scrape, scrape against the concrete sidewalk), the car alarm quits, and people drive nicely again.
City living...Urban living, I think it's called now. There's a real estate company in Houston with this name: Urban Living. The agents should record this noise and play it for prospective urban livingites. Just to make sure these people migrating from the suburbs can handle it.
If all the suburbanites are coming into the city, maybe it's time for the urbanites to head for the suburbs.
Then again, I bet there are way more leaf blowers in the suburbs. In fact, I think leaf blowers were invented for the suburbs.
Gah.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Welcome Back
Today is the first day of school at the school where I taught before I decided to become a SAHM (a super-awesome-hot-mama, or, in other words, a stay-at-home-mom). I admit that I feel a twinge of nostalgia about school starting without me. Yesterday, I was on campus to interview some teachers for a freelance writing gig I'm doing for the school website, and the bustle of teachers going from meeting to classroom to copy room to bookstore back to classroom felt organic to me, even though I was no longer doing those things. Rather, I was searching for the art teacher so that I could interview her for a feature about her, and, of course, I couldn't find her. I'm sure she was at some meeting or other. How many times as a teacher had I kept some parent or student waiting because of a faculty meeting or the line at the copy machine, where a host of other teachers waited to xerox their assignments for the next class, caught in copy room gridlock?
When I finally found the art teacher, she seemed inordinately calm despite the litter of students about to descend into her life for the next nine months. As I interviewed her about what inspires her and how she inspires her students, Clara (whom I'd stubbornly brought to work with me -- why else stay at home if you have to hire a babysitter?) decided she wanted to breastfeed RIGHT THEN AND THERE. Luckily the art teacher is also a mom, so when I asked if it was okay for me to breastfeed my daughter during the interview, she said "Of course," without thinking twice. There I was breastfeeding my daughter with one arm and taking down notes and quotes with the other.
How awesome is that?
When I finally found the art teacher, she seemed inordinately calm despite the litter of students about to descend into her life for the next nine months. As I interviewed her about what inspires her and how she inspires her students, Clara (whom I'd stubbornly brought to work with me -- why else stay at home if you have to hire a babysitter?) decided she wanted to breastfeed RIGHT THEN AND THERE. Luckily the art teacher is also a mom, so when I asked if it was okay for me to breastfeed my daughter during the interview, she said "Of course," without thinking twice. There I was breastfeeding my daughter with one arm and taking down notes and quotes with the other.
How awesome is that?
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Paradise Lost
Just back from visiting my family in Southern California for two weeks, David proclaims how good it is to be home, back in Houston, TX. I wonder: What is it about Houston that would cause a person to prefer Houston to COASTAL Southern California?
Point: This is Houston, Texas, and Texans prefer ALL THINGS TEXAS over ALL else. Hailing from California, I understand, because Californians prefer California over all else, although they are more open minded and tolerant of the benefits of other states. Blue State v. Red State type of thing.
David has a point, though. I, too -- a Californian -- prefer Houston over Southern California, specifically Orange County, where I grew up -- breeding ground of Nixon, Mary Kay LeTourneau, Gwen Stefani and Walt Disney. And a bunch of other people. Like my Dad's family.
My dad's family is old, old California -- known as Californios, the "o" ending signifying people who were native to the region before the Americans took over. My dad's ancestry includes Don Juan Forster. Forster was a Brit who became a Mexican citizen in 1832 when he married Ysidora Pico, the sister of Pio and Andres Pico, the last Mexican Governors of Alta California, before the state entered the Union in 1848. The Picos, being in charge of the area at that time, "owned" a lot of land. Forster began buying land in Southern California in the late 1830s and early 1840s, including the San Juan Capistrano Mission for $710, where he and his family lived for 20 years before Lincoln gave all the California Missions back to the church in the early 1860s.
And blah, blah, blah. I'm supposed to be working on this story -- the novel, the screenplay -- but there's always something that gets in the way. Or else, the story's so big it gets in my way. Something like that.
Here's one thing I know: as I drive the freeways in Southern California, specifically the 5 and the 405, I regard the surroundings from LA to Oceanside as a sort of mythic landscape -- California Pastoral -- even cities like Westminster, even Compton. Once much of the land along those freeways was my family's land. From Saddleback to the Pacific, they owned -- Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores. I don't know how to characterize the kind of psychic regret a child feels when, while riding in the car on freeways, she comprehends the reality of the paradise her ancestors lost.
Is it any wonder that I feel at home in this intimate inferno?
Point: This is Houston, Texas, and Texans prefer ALL THINGS TEXAS over ALL else. Hailing from California, I understand, because Californians prefer California over all else, although they are more open minded and tolerant of the benefits of other states. Blue State v. Red State type of thing.
David has a point, though. I, too -- a Californian -- prefer Houston over Southern California, specifically Orange County, where I grew up -- breeding ground of Nixon, Mary Kay LeTourneau, Gwen Stefani and Walt Disney. And a bunch of other people. Like my Dad's family.
My dad's family is old, old California -- known as Californios, the "o" ending signifying people who were native to the region before the Americans took over. My dad's ancestry includes Don Juan Forster. Forster was a Brit who became a Mexican citizen in 1832 when he married Ysidora Pico, the sister of Pio and Andres Pico, the last Mexican Governors of Alta California, before the state entered the Union in 1848. The Picos, being in charge of the area at that time, "owned" a lot of land. Forster began buying land in Southern California in the late 1830s and early 1840s, including the San Juan Capistrano Mission for $710, where he and his family lived for 20 years before Lincoln gave all the California Missions back to the church in the early 1860s.
And blah, blah, blah. I'm supposed to be working on this story -- the novel, the screenplay -- but there's always something that gets in the way. Or else, the story's so big it gets in my way. Something like that.
Here's one thing I know: as I drive the freeways in Southern California, specifically the 5 and the 405, I regard the surroundings from LA to Oceanside as a sort of mythic landscape -- California Pastoral -- even cities like Westminster, even Compton. Once much of the land along those freeways was my family's land. From Saddleback to the Pacific, they owned -- Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores. I don't know how to characterize the kind of psychic regret a child feels when, while riding in the car on freeways, she comprehends the reality of the paradise her ancestors lost.
Is it any wonder that I feel at home in this intimate inferno?
Friday, July 22, 2005
Stomach Pain
My stomach has undergone major surgery twice now in under six months: first for the C-Section, and the other day for an emergency appendectomy. "Emergency appendectomy" is redundant, because the only reason one gets an appendectomy is due to an emergency situation -- like the thing is gonna burst or something.
My stomach is sore!
And Clara is a kicker -- when she nurses she wiggles and kicks with glee. "Don't kick mommy!" I keep pleading with her, but she doesn't yet understand these words. I'm gonna have to duct tape a pillow around my waist or something to keep the OUCH down.
My stomach is sore!
And Clara is a kicker -- when she nurses she wiggles and kicks with glee. "Don't kick mommy!" I keep pleading with her, but she doesn't yet understand these words. I'm gonna have to duct tape a pillow around my waist or something to keep the OUCH down.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Remember Toulouse-Lautrec
One year before I moved to Houston, I dreamed:
I'm a cabaret singer in an LA soup kitchen. The food line is full of preppy boys dressed in plaid bermudas and college sweatshirts. I'm standing at the grand piano in the corner, dressed in a purple lamé gown, singing "New York, New York." The piano player is an older man, balding, with a beard. Suddenly, one of the boys breaks out of line and accosts me. He throws me to the floor and begins assaulting me. The piano player jumps up from his bench, storms over to us, and yanks the boy off of me. He says to the boy, whom he's got by the collar, "Do not touch her. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TOUCH HER. She is sacred." Then the piano player looks at me and says, "Remember Toulouse-Lautrec." Then he looks up and announces to the soup kitchen patrons, "Remember Toulouse-Lautrec!"
I woke up with "Remember Toulouse-Lautrec!" resounding in my mind, although I didn't know how to pronounce his name properly at that point. It sounded in my head like "To-Louise Lautrec." Likewise, I can't say I knew conscioulsy who he was at the time. I had to ask the cafe manager when I got to work that morning, "Who is To-Louise Lautrec?"
"You mean Too-Loose La Trek," she said. "French Painter."
"Oh. Huh." Why was I supposed to remember him?
Later that Fall, I moved to San Francisco, one day after the 1989 earthquake. My housemates-to-be were still stuck in their old house in Santa Cruz, where the main street had caved into the ground.
I pulled up to the curb in SF's Richmond district and went searching for a phone to call and find out when my housemates would arrive with the keys. The Richmond showed signs of damage -- sidewalk corners buckled up like giant termite mounds, yellow caution tape draped across doorways -- though it wasn't devastated like the Marina District, where whole city blocks had collapsed.
The truth is, the quake shook me up quite a bit, even though I had missed it by a matter of hours (I've told stories of how I was in the shower at the time of the quake; they were fictions, I have to admit now) The ruin cast a palpable vulnerability over the city, and the pall heightened my senses, set me on alert for signs.
I found a cafe around the corner on 35th and Balboa, and went in to use the pay phone. "We'll be there this evening," my roommate-to-be said.
I hung up and went to use the bathroom. Sitting in the closet-cum-watercloset, I worried that I'd gotten myself into a mess. I had no plans except vauge ones "to become a writer." I had no job. I had no family there. I had a place to live and a car, but I had no idea how I would support myself. I'd moved to San Francisco after flipping a coin to decide between there or Seattle. SF won.
Through my worry, another feeling started to emerge: this strange sensation of familiarity and at-homeness that I couldn't quite place. My breast expanded with that feeling one sometimes has that "everything, EVERYTHING, is O.K." Gradually, I focused on the wallpaper. When I recognized it, I started: Toulouse-Lautrec's lithographs of the Moulin Rouge surrounded me as I sat on the pot. "Remember Toulouse-Lautrec," I heard the piano player say. An omen, I thought. A good one.
It was Tolouse-Lautrec that guided me to Houston,TX.
By spring of 1990, I was sick of San Francisco. I had a great job at the Exploratorium Museum, a trove of artistic and thrilling friends who dined and danced together almost every night, an obsessive crush on a robotics artist who actually had a crush on me, too. Life was sweet. Life was fun. Nonetheless, I was depressed.
Fatefully, I applied to graduate schools in Creative Writing. My main criterion for choosing a school was money: whoever gave me the most money, that's where I was going. I had an offer from New York University, which came with 16 points of tuition (whatever that means), a one-semester teaching assistantship (for $1500!?) and personal phone calls full of praise for my work from Sharon Olds and Galway Kinnell. I was rejected by Iowa. Montana and Arizona accepted me, but I didn't want to live in those places. Then Ed Hirsch from the University of Houston called and offered me fellowship on top of fellowship and three guaranteed years of teaching undergraduate comp and lit classes (that once actually sounded like a good thing). I didn't know who Ed Hirsch was at the time, but I knew that I could live richly in Houston on what they were offering me. Ed Hirsch invited me to Houston so that I could check it out before making my decision. They flew me here in April, during Azalea Trail Week. Cheaters!
One of the best advertisements for Houston was the lineless face of the 45 year old hostess on Wroxton Street with whom I stayed. "It's the humidity, honey," she drawled when I looked stunned by how old she said she was. My last afternoon in Houston, I still hadn't made a decision. Mr. Hirsch asked me if it were likely I'd accept their invitation. Not knowing how to make such a decision, and lacking a coin, I went to my hostess's library and randomly pulled a book out of her bookshelf: the 20th anniversary edition of Antaeus Magazine, a now defunct literary journal.
Using the lit mag as one might a Bible, I closed my eyes and flipped open the book to a page, any page, stuck my finger to the page and thought, "This page will help me make my decision." When I opened my eyes, and this is the honest to goodness truth, I saw my finger pointing to a poem by Richard Howard, who taught in the U of H program at the time. "If this isn't a sign, then I don't know what is," I thought. But just in case I had doubt, here is the kicker: Howard's poem was titled, "An Homage to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec," and the poem mentioned in it a dream.
Who knows what might have happened had I gone to New York, New York? If my dream was any indication, it might not have gone well for me in the Big Apple.
I'm not sure if I should love or hate Toulouse-Lautrec for leading me here. I feel a bit of both, really: love/hate.
I am stunned at the beauty of my daughter, and I wouldn't have had her without my husband, and I wouldn't have met him without Houston.
Right before I graduated, I wrote a poem for Toulouse-Lautric that I liked. I included it in my manuscript. Ed Hirsch, who was somewhat of a mentor to me during my graduate years, praised it during my thesis defense as the best poem in my collection.
I don't necessarily agree with him, but it was a poem that came out whole, as if I already knew by heart and was simply catching the words on paper.
I like to believe that life can be like this, too; what we have in our hearts -- our dreams -- can be captured and realized with minimal effort. That maybe by letting our lives live us, we get out of our own way and live more gracefully, more magically.
I'm a cabaret singer in an LA soup kitchen. The food line is full of preppy boys dressed in plaid bermudas and college sweatshirts. I'm standing at the grand piano in the corner, dressed in a purple lamé gown, singing "New York, New York." The piano player is an older man, balding, with a beard. Suddenly, one of the boys breaks out of line and accosts me. He throws me to the floor and begins assaulting me. The piano player jumps up from his bench, storms over to us, and yanks the boy off of me. He says to the boy, whom he's got by the collar, "Do not touch her. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TOUCH HER. She is sacred." Then the piano player looks at me and says, "Remember Toulouse-Lautrec." Then he looks up and announces to the soup kitchen patrons, "Remember Toulouse-Lautrec!"
I woke up with "Remember Toulouse-Lautrec!" resounding in my mind, although I didn't know how to pronounce his name properly at that point. It sounded in my head like "To-Louise Lautrec." Likewise, I can't say I knew conscioulsy who he was at the time. I had to ask the cafe manager when I got to work that morning, "Who is To-Louise Lautrec?"
"You mean Too-Loose La Trek," she said. "French Painter."
"Oh. Huh." Why was I supposed to remember him?
Later that Fall, I moved to San Francisco, one day after the 1989 earthquake. My housemates-to-be were still stuck in their old house in Santa Cruz, where the main street had caved into the ground.
I pulled up to the curb in SF's Richmond district and went searching for a phone to call and find out when my housemates would arrive with the keys. The Richmond showed signs of damage -- sidewalk corners buckled up like giant termite mounds, yellow caution tape draped across doorways -- though it wasn't devastated like the Marina District, where whole city blocks had collapsed.
The truth is, the quake shook me up quite a bit, even though I had missed it by a matter of hours (I've told stories of how I was in the shower at the time of the quake; they were fictions, I have to admit now) The ruin cast a palpable vulnerability over the city, and the pall heightened my senses, set me on alert for signs.
I found a cafe around the corner on 35th and Balboa, and went in to use the pay phone. "We'll be there this evening," my roommate-to-be said.
I hung up and went to use the bathroom. Sitting in the closet-cum-watercloset, I worried that I'd gotten myself into a mess. I had no plans except vauge ones "to become a writer." I had no job. I had no family there. I had a place to live and a car, but I had no idea how I would support myself. I'd moved to San Francisco after flipping a coin to decide between there or Seattle. SF won.
Through my worry, another feeling started to emerge: this strange sensation of familiarity and at-homeness that I couldn't quite place. My breast expanded with that feeling one sometimes has that "everything, EVERYTHING, is O.K." Gradually, I focused on the wallpaper. When I recognized it, I started: Toulouse-Lautrec's lithographs of the Moulin Rouge surrounded me as I sat on the pot. "Remember Toulouse-Lautrec," I heard the piano player say. An omen, I thought. A good one.
It was Tolouse-Lautrec that guided me to Houston,TX.
By spring of 1990, I was sick of San Francisco. I had a great job at the Exploratorium Museum, a trove of artistic and thrilling friends who dined and danced together almost every night, an obsessive crush on a robotics artist who actually had a crush on me, too. Life was sweet. Life was fun. Nonetheless, I was depressed.
Fatefully, I applied to graduate schools in Creative Writing. My main criterion for choosing a school was money: whoever gave me the most money, that's where I was going. I had an offer from New York University, which came with 16 points of tuition (whatever that means), a one-semester teaching assistantship (for $1500!?) and personal phone calls full of praise for my work from Sharon Olds and Galway Kinnell. I was rejected by Iowa. Montana and Arizona accepted me, but I didn't want to live in those places. Then Ed Hirsch from the University of Houston called and offered me fellowship on top of fellowship and three guaranteed years of teaching undergraduate comp and lit classes (that once actually sounded like a good thing). I didn't know who Ed Hirsch was at the time, but I knew that I could live richly in Houston on what they were offering me. Ed Hirsch invited me to Houston so that I could check it out before making my decision. They flew me here in April, during Azalea Trail Week. Cheaters!
One of the best advertisements for Houston was the lineless face of the 45 year old hostess on Wroxton Street with whom I stayed. "It's the humidity, honey," she drawled when I looked stunned by how old she said she was. My last afternoon in Houston, I still hadn't made a decision. Mr. Hirsch asked me if it were likely I'd accept their invitation. Not knowing how to make such a decision, and lacking a coin, I went to my hostess's library and randomly pulled a book out of her bookshelf: the 20th anniversary edition of Antaeus Magazine, a now defunct literary journal.
Using the lit mag as one might a Bible, I closed my eyes and flipped open the book to a page, any page, stuck my finger to the page and thought, "This page will help me make my decision." When I opened my eyes, and this is the honest to goodness truth, I saw my finger pointing to a poem by Richard Howard, who taught in the U of H program at the time. "If this isn't a sign, then I don't know what is," I thought. But just in case I had doubt, here is the kicker: Howard's poem was titled, "An Homage to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec," and the poem mentioned in it a dream.
Who knows what might have happened had I gone to New York, New York? If my dream was any indication, it might not have gone well for me in the Big Apple.
I'm not sure if I should love or hate Toulouse-Lautrec for leading me here. I feel a bit of both, really: love/hate.
I am stunned at the beauty of my daughter, and I wouldn't have had her without my husband, and I wouldn't have met him without Houston.
Right before I graduated, I wrote a poem for Toulouse-Lautric that I liked. I included it in my manuscript. Ed Hirsch, who was somewhat of a mentor to me during my graduate years, praised it during my thesis defense as the best poem in my collection.
I don't necessarily agree with him, but it was a poem that came out whole, as if I already knew by heart and was simply catching the words on paper.
I like to believe that life can be like this, too; what we have in our hearts -- our dreams -- can be captured and realized with minimal effort. That maybe by letting our lives live us, we get out of our own way and live more gracefully, more magically.
Friday, July 15, 2005
Neighbors
Our "crazy" neighbor lady just rang the doorbell and slam-knocked on our door. I was finishing nursing Clara, so I hooked my bra-shirt shut and carried Clara downstairs, imagining Zorca standing on the doorstep, bearing food. (I knew her by her salutation.)
"I brought you some excellent spaghetti!" Zorca yelled on the other side of the door.
I undid the deadbolt and opened to her holding a black electric pot in her hands. She smiled huge. "It's really good."
Because my arms were full with Clara, I invited Zorca to bring the pot upstairs.
"Thank you for the food, Zorca," I said. "And thank you for the last time, too." The last time she rang and slam-knocked, she bore pork with peas. This was her first time upstairs, however.
"Your husband loves you SO much," she said as we climbed the stairs.
This isn't as out of the blue as it sounds. During lunch, David told me about how this morning, while I was at my annual well-woman exam, Zorca came over to borrow a can opener. He lent her one. She came back 10 minutes later to ask him if he could come over and help her open the cans. "You know how cans are different on the bottom than they are on top, so you can't open them from the bottom?" David says.
"Uh huh," I say, although prior to his telling me, I'd no idea that the bottoms of cans were different from the tops.
"Well, she was trying to open them from the bottom."
"Huh," I say. "What's her house like inside?"
Last year, I called the cops on Zorca, before I knew her by name, because I could have sworn she was going to run her White SUV over her grown-up son one overcast afternoon. Could have sworn because I saw her jump into her Ford Explorer, yelling "I-ma gonna keeell you!" Then she gunned her car in the direction of her son. Her son jumped in his own car and gunned back toward her. They played chicken like this for 20 minutes in the empty lot next to our house. By the time 911 arrived, Zorca and her son had retired to her townhouse across the street. This was not the first time I'd seen and heard them fight, although the chicken-fight WAS a first. But it was the last time I called 911.
"Her house is nice inside," David says.
This woman traded two prime lots in Midtown Houston for a new corner townhouse. It might have been a good deal at the time, but now the trade seems ridiculous, what with current Midtown prices per square foot, Zorca having received the short end of the deal. Regardless, she loves her townhome; every day she spends an hour watering her roses and her band-aid width strip of grass. Through the downstairs, street level window, the one with a "nice room for rent" handwritten sign taped to the inside, I've spied a wicker shelf system filled with knicknacks like porcelain white rabbits, fake (or real?) IIadro, the Virgin Mary, Jesus, Spanish Dancer Dolls, ceramic Buddhas. On her balconies, hibiscus and plumeria florish. A windchime with 4 foot long gongs hangs from the lower balconey.
"Zorca wants me to make her a website," David tells me.
"What for?" I ask.
"She's a psychic."
"SHE IS?!" This is interesting news. "I wonder if she knows that we didn't eat the pork and peas," I say.
I think she really IS psychic. She couldn't have picked a better time to come over and tell me how much my husband loves me because I had been reading this sad short story by Charles Baxter about a dissolving marriage, and, while reading, I was worrying about the dim attention I've been paying to David whenever he tries to talk to me lately.
"Thank you for telling me that, Zorca."
"You're welcome," she says. She puts the spaghetti on the countertop. "You wanna do some writing for me about gypsies?" she asks. Rumor from the slumlandlord is that Zorca is, herself, a gypsy.
"Maybe," I say.
"You know, nobody knows about the gypsies. They think we are either thieves or robbers or steal the babies." She kisses Clara's cheeks. "Oooooh you such a cute baby."
"You and your husband should go out and let me babysit," she says as I walk her to the door. "I'm right across the street, you know. But you probably won't do that."
Psychic. She is.
"I brought you some excellent spaghetti!" Zorca yelled on the other side of the door.
I undid the deadbolt and opened to her holding a black electric pot in her hands. She smiled huge. "It's really good."
Because my arms were full with Clara, I invited Zorca to bring the pot upstairs.
"Thank you for the food, Zorca," I said. "And thank you for the last time, too." The last time she rang and slam-knocked, she bore pork with peas. This was her first time upstairs, however.
"Your husband loves you SO much," she said as we climbed the stairs.
This isn't as out of the blue as it sounds. During lunch, David told me about how this morning, while I was at my annual well-woman exam, Zorca came over to borrow a can opener. He lent her one. She came back 10 minutes later to ask him if he could come over and help her open the cans. "You know how cans are different on the bottom than they are on top, so you can't open them from the bottom?" David says.
"Uh huh," I say, although prior to his telling me, I'd no idea that the bottoms of cans were different from the tops.
"Well, she was trying to open them from the bottom."
"Huh," I say. "What's her house like inside?"
Last year, I called the cops on Zorca, before I knew her by name, because I could have sworn she was going to run her White SUV over her grown-up son one overcast afternoon. Could have sworn because I saw her jump into her Ford Explorer, yelling "I-ma gonna keeell you!" Then she gunned her car in the direction of her son. Her son jumped in his own car and gunned back toward her. They played chicken like this for 20 minutes in the empty lot next to our house. By the time 911 arrived, Zorca and her son had retired to her townhouse across the street. This was not the first time I'd seen and heard them fight, although the chicken-fight WAS a first. But it was the last time I called 911.
"Her house is nice inside," David says.
This woman traded two prime lots in Midtown Houston for a new corner townhouse. It might have been a good deal at the time, but now the trade seems ridiculous, what with current Midtown prices per square foot, Zorca having received the short end of the deal. Regardless, she loves her townhome; every day she spends an hour watering her roses and her band-aid width strip of grass. Through the downstairs, street level window, the one with a "nice room for rent" handwritten sign taped to the inside, I've spied a wicker shelf system filled with knicknacks like porcelain white rabbits, fake (or real?) IIadro, the Virgin Mary, Jesus, Spanish Dancer Dolls, ceramic Buddhas. On her balconies, hibiscus and plumeria florish. A windchime with 4 foot long gongs hangs from the lower balconey.
"Zorca wants me to make her a website," David tells me.
"What for?" I ask.
"She's a psychic."
"SHE IS?!" This is interesting news. "I wonder if she knows that we didn't eat the pork and peas," I say.
I think she really IS psychic. She couldn't have picked a better time to come over and tell me how much my husband loves me because I had been reading this sad short story by Charles Baxter about a dissolving marriage, and, while reading, I was worrying about the dim attention I've been paying to David whenever he tries to talk to me lately.
"Thank you for telling me that, Zorca."
"You're welcome," she says. She puts the spaghetti on the countertop. "You wanna do some writing for me about gypsies?" she asks. Rumor from the slumlandlord is that Zorca is, herself, a gypsy.
"Maybe," I say.
"You know, nobody knows about the gypsies. They think we are either thieves or robbers or steal the babies." She kisses Clara's cheeks. "Oooooh you such a cute baby."
"You and your husband should go out and let me babysit," she says as I walk her to the door. "I'm right across the street, you know. But you probably won't do that."
Psychic. She is.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Ruin Came in a Trap (American Puritan)
Today's blog title is the name of a poem I wrote a long time ago. Like in 1993. The first part of the title is an anagram for the second part of the title, the part in parentheses. When I wrote the poem, I wasn't thinking about the Middle East, of bombs bombarding Baghdad, of the dissolution of Babylon. But I like that the poem is prescient this way. I feel good when I'm prescient. Or else, I feel scared.
In my opinion, anyone who supported this current war of George Bush's in the Middle East before it started, and anyone who supports it now, is stupid. Not paying attention to anything but his or her own butt. Anyone who supports this war is not thinking critically. Too much "Dancing with the Stars." Too much "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"
I'll never forget when my dear friend F. outlined the idea for "Who Wants to Be a Millioniare?" for me, before the show existed. F. was developing shows for ABC (nee Buena Vista), and this was one of the shows in development. It was 1991. I listened to her, aghast at what she was describing. Then I told her "it sounds ridiculous. I wouldn't watch it."
As it turns out, this was the beginning of my career as the "negative psychology prognosticator" for F.'s shows in development. If I hated the sound of them, they were sure to be hits.
*** *** ***
Ruin Came in a Trap (American Puritan)
In the beginning, a trick of light: the serpent
coiled around a branch. Eat me,
he whispered, and you shall live forever.
Eve ate, and in her eating, Hunger grew
a womb. She swooned toward Adam, bathing nearby
admiring his symmetrical reflection. Stunned,
he growled, What are you doing here?
With stuttering hands, she offered the apricot,
half-bitten, golden, red veins sweeping outward
from a wooden heart. Though she desired the demon
commanding the garden, she spoke so that breath
could gentle itself, bore this breath deeply; gave air
a body – infant, girl, woman. Kin lived, fought, died,
leaving Eve empty, never sated, never still.
Life is so long.
You, whores of Babylon,
with diseased tongues—thrush-coated, black and blue,
stippled with sores, loving what they lick,
happily wagging and prehensile -- vomit disorder
into our hearts, so that we will remember
the stones beneath Babel and the forgotten ladder.
1993
In my opinion, anyone who supported this current war of George Bush's in the Middle East before it started, and anyone who supports it now, is stupid. Not paying attention to anything but his or her own butt. Anyone who supports this war is not thinking critically. Too much "Dancing with the Stars." Too much "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"
I'll never forget when my dear friend F. outlined the idea for "Who Wants to Be a Millioniare?" for me, before the show existed. F. was developing shows for ABC (nee Buena Vista), and this was one of the shows in development. It was 1991. I listened to her, aghast at what she was describing. Then I told her "it sounds ridiculous. I wouldn't watch it."
As it turns out, this was the beginning of my career as the "negative psychology prognosticator" for F.'s shows in development. If I hated the sound of them, they were sure to be hits.
*** *** ***
Ruin Came in a Trap (American Puritan)
In the beginning, a trick of light: the serpent
coiled around a branch. Eat me,
he whispered, and you shall live forever.
Eve ate, and in her eating, Hunger grew
a womb. She swooned toward Adam, bathing nearby
admiring his symmetrical reflection. Stunned,
he growled, What are you doing here?
With stuttering hands, she offered the apricot,
half-bitten, golden, red veins sweeping outward
from a wooden heart. Though she desired the demon
commanding the garden, she spoke so that breath
could gentle itself, bore this breath deeply; gave air
a body – infant, girl, woman. Kin lived, fought, died,
leaving Eve empty, never sated, never still.
Life is so long.
You, whores of Babylon,
with diseased tongues—thrush-coated, black and blue,
stippled with sores, loving what they lick,
happily wagging and prehensile -- vomit disorder
into our hearts, so that we will remember
the stones beneath Babel and the forgotten ladder.
1993
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Flip
Whenever I have to make a decision, and I'm no good to myself on my own for advice, I flip a coin. I've found this to be a reliable method. I do two out of three, just to be sure that the coin is telling me some sort of truth. I don't know if this method would work for ALL decisions to be made. But it's as good as my opinion, which is as fickle and as sturdy as any coin.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
YEEHAW
I'm so fucking happy. And I mean that 196%. The remaining four percent I reserve for my morbid inherent depression (comes with the model); my fascination with the perverse (She taught me to love it, Jael); my deep despair in the state of the world (not the universe, the universe -- like it or not -- is cool); and "other." "Other" being the Mystery, for which I reserve awful amounts of respect.
What more can I say?
To paraphrase my friend Diana (Now-My-Character-Is-Going-to-Kiss-Your-Character Diana), paraphrasing our friend, or hero? Walt Whitman:
Do I contain multitudes? Very well then;
I contain multitudes.
That's how I heard it from the cosmos.
There's a rain storm, a thunder storm, here in Houston, Texas. Thunder over Lightning. It's not frightening.
It's like Thunder (Thunder), Lightning (Lightning).
The way you love
me
is frightening.
What more can I say?
To paraphrase my friend Diana (Now-My-Character-Is-Going-to-Kiss-Your-Character Diana), paraphrasing our friend, or hero? Walt Whitman:
Do I contain multitudes? Very well then;
I contain multitudes.
That's how I heard it from the cosmos.
There's a rain storm, a thunder storm, here in Houston, Texas. Thunder over Lightning. It's not frightening.
It's like Thunder (Thunder), Lightning (Lightning).
The way you love
me
is frightening.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
We Rent
Behold the house: an early 1900s Victorian, shabby on the outside -- to the point of looking haunted -- palatial on the inside. We live in the second-story apartment: Three bedrooms, three bathrooms (one the size of a Manhattan efficiency apartment); 14 foot ceilings; crown moldings; hardwoods with inlaid parquet borders throughout; built-ins, built-ins, built-ins, including beveled mirrors, armoires, and a wall of drawers in the 30x20 foot bathroom. Water-glass windows, central heat and cooling, gas stove, washer/dryer. Location, Location, Location: Midtown Houston (smack between the rival Vietnamese restaurants); one block off the brand new Light Rail; celebrated restaurants replete with interesting drinks, a Saturday organic farmer's market, and world famous soul-food breakfasts less than a five-minute walk away.
All this for less than $1200.00 per month.
Were you to visit us, you would be stung with envy, and I bet before leaving you'd say, "let us know when you're gonna move."
Only, you don't want to live here, really.
First there's our slumlord, who lives in the apartment below us and has the annoying habit of crashing our parties.
Second there are the plagues that come with the house.
Last summer it was the month-and-a-half flea infestation that our slum landlord would not properly deal with until I told him I could be pregnant. I wasn't pregnant, nor did I want to be pregnant at the time, but -- go figure -- it worked to tell him that I COULD be. Or maybe it was the mention of "lawsuit" in the same conversation. Within hours, a certified exterminator was in the house, and that afternoon the fleas were gone.
In an ironic twist, I became pregnant that very same day. I thought I wasn't ovulating, but, as it turns out, I was. Nine months later, Clara and I lay in bed together, recovering from the trauma of giving birth and being born, suffering the rancid stench of a rodent who was decomposing directly beneath the master bedroom floor. "Only thing we can do about the smell," said our slumlord "is wait till it goes away."
After the rodent fully decomposed, there was the fly infestation. "Must be the spring hatch," said the slumlord. Two flyswatters and five days later, the flies were gone.
Then there were the ants -- the millions of them that swarmed out of the stroller undercarriage bag as I was carrying it and Clara to the car one morning. Miraculously, I only got three ant bites (did I mention they were RED ants?) and Clara was unharmed. But by the same afternoon, the red ants had migrated to the red couch in the living room. The slumlord brought up some homemade organic ant killer -- citrus and coconut based -- which was actually very considerate of him, and after a few days the living room was ant-free. But the house wasn't. The ants had surreptitiously traveled to the bedroom. "They like to eat foam core," the slumlord said, when I showed him how they were crawling in between the mattress and the box spring.
My husband tells me our slumlord is scared of me. He should be. I may just slip some biocontaminant into his Brita as payback for all the pain and suffering his negligence has caused my family.
Lest you think "house of plagues" too strong a term here, let me assure you that there was even a flood. Memorial Day Weekend, I lay in our king-size bed with Clara, drifting into sweet, necessary sleep after returning from an overnight in Galveston. Outside, "gale force winds" raged. Buckets of rain began pouring over our city. I thought to myself, "wow, that rain is so loud, it sounds like it's raining inside." I turned to look toward the bedroom door, and, lo and behold!, it WAS raining inside. POURING! Through the attic pull-down stairway door.
WTF????!!!!##@$%^&**(()
Turns out, a bunch of shingles blew off the roof (which the slumlord had promised to fix a year ago) in the gale force winds.
You may be wondering.... the answer is yes, we're looking to move. Our two-year lease is coming to an end. We'd like to buy, so we're assessing our financial situation. It may take a while, but sooner or later, WE'RE OUTTA HERE.
You can start putting your names into the hat now.
All this for less than $1200.00 per month.
Were you to visit us, you would be stung with envy, and I bet before leaving you'd say, "let us know when you're gonna move."
Only, you don't want to live here, really.
First there's our slumlord, who lives in the apartment below us and has the annoying habit of crashing our parties.
Second there are the plagues that come with the house.
Last summer it was the month-and-a-half flea infestation that our slum landlord would not properly deal with until I told him I could be pregnant. I wasn't pregnant, nor did I want to be pregnant at the time, but -- go figure -- it worked to tell him that I COULD be. Or maybe it was the mention of "lawsuit" in the same conversation. Within hours, a certified exterminator was in the house, and that afternoon the fleas were gone.
In an ironic twist, I became pregnant that very same day. I thought I wasn't ovulating, but, as it turns out, I was. Nine months later, Clara and I lay in bed together, recovering from the trauma of giving birth and being born, suffering the rancid stench of a rodent who was decomposing directly beneath the master bedroom floor. "Only thing we can do about the smell," said our slumlord "is wait till it goes away."
After the rodent fully decomposed, there was the fly infestation. "Must be the spring hatch," said the slumlord. Two flyswatters and five days later, the flies were gone.
Then there were the ants -- the millions of them that swarmed out of the stroller undercarriage bag as I was carrying it and Clara to the car one morning. Miraculously, I only got three ant bites (did I mention they were RED ants?) and Clara was unharmed. But by the same afternoon, the red ants had migrated to the red couch in the living room. The slumlord brought up some homemade organic ant killer -- citrus and coconut based -- which was actually very considerate of him, and after a few days the living room was ant-free. But the house wasn't. The ants had surreptitiously traveled to the bedroom. "They like to eat foam core," the slumlord said, when I showed him how they were crawling in between the mattress and the box spring.
My husband tells me our slumlord is scared of me. He should be. I may just slip some biocontaminant into his Brita as payback for all the pain and suffering his negligence has caused my family.
Lest you think "house of plagues" too strong a term here, let me assure you that there was even a flood. Memorial Day Weekend, I lay in our king-size bed with Clara, drifting into sweet, necessary sleep after returning from an overnight in Galveston. Outside, "gale force winds" raged. Buckets of rain began pouring over our city. I thought to myself, "wow, that rain is so loud, it sounds like it's raining inside." I turned to look toward the bedroom door, and, lo and behold!, it WAS raining inside. POURING! Through the attic pull-down stairway door.
WTF????!!!!##@$%^&**(()
Turns out, a bunch of shingles blew off the roof (which the slumlord had promised to fix a year ago) in the gale force winds.
You may be wondering.... the answer is yes, we're looking to move. Our two-year lease is coming to an end. We'd like to buy, so we're assessing our financial situation. It may take a while, but sooner or later, WE'RE OUTTA HERE.
You can start putting your names into the hat now.
Saturday, July 02, 2005
Far-Flung
This morning is a typical Houston July morning: before 9 a.m., it's 84 degrees, but it feels like 92, according to weather.com. There's a breeze out there, but it's not helping: I'm still bathing in my own sweet sweat from walking to the farmer's market two blocks away. Humidity is only in the 70s right now. Weatherman said the humidity will reach the 90s, with 99 degrees predicted as the high temp for today.
Radical.
I won't forget the day I moved to Houston: August 10, 1990. The first morning I walked outside and felt the heat, the humidity, I bellowed -- to no one -- "YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!" Walking to the convenience store down the street, the air around me felt like a wet wool blanket slathered in mayonnaise.
Weather apologists try to sell the "yeah, but living in Houston is great for one's skin!" story. That's bullshit. Any benefits of the moisture in the air are obliterated by the blistering sunshine plus the appalling air quality (most polluted city in the U.S.!), both of which contribute to the gaping hole in the ozone layer above Space City. If you don't wear sunscreen here, you are taking your already jeopardized life in your own keratoid-covered hands.
I grew up in Southern California, in a mission town, located on the balmy shores of America's answer to the Mediterranean -- the South Pacific Coast -- known for surf spots like Trestles, Doheny and T-Street. In the early 1900's, Laguna Beach was home to the California Plein Air school of painting. This group was inspired by the verdant arroyos stocked with lazy eucalyptus, the breathtaking cliffs racked with fuchsia bouganvillea, the unbelievable blue expanses and, on clear days, the views to Catalina Island.
Today's high there will be 77 degrees.
Why don't you just go back there, then?
Because I love to suffer, and I'm good at it, too. I'm a lapsed Catholic, which means I don't have the church anymore to flog my soul. Nature abhors a vacuum and all that. The Houston Summer is my hairshirt.
But the weather isn't the only thing that keeps me here. I love how no-zoning laws result in streets that go like this: church, convenience store, adult bookstore, seeded lot, restaurant, elementary school, candy store, single family dwelling, church, convenience store, adult bookstore....
It makes no rational sense, this city. What reason-minded type of folk build their lives in a swampy, croc-infested, floodplain rife with mosquitoes and cockroaches the size of Ford Fiestas?
People like me, I guess.
Radical.
I won't forget the day I moved to Houston: August 10, 1990. The first morning I walked outside and felt the heat, the humidity, I bellowed -- to no one -- "YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!" Walking to the convenience store down the street, the air around me felt like a wet wool blanket slathered in mayonnaise.
Weather apologists try to sell the "yeah, but living in Houston is great for one's skin!" story. That's bullshit. Any benefits of the moisture in the air are obliterated by the blistering sunshine plus the appalling air quality (most polluted city in the U.S.!), both of which contribute to the gaping hole in the ozone layer above Space City. If you don't wear sunscreen here, you are taking your already jeopardized life in your own keratoid-covered hands.
I grew up in Southern California, in a mission town, located on the balmy shores of America's answer to the Mediterranean -- the South Pacific Coast -- known for surf spots like Trestles, Doheny and T-Street. In the early 1900's, Laguna Beach was home to the California Plein Air school of painting. This group was inspired by the verdant arroyos stocked with lazy eucalyptus, the breathtaking cliffs racked with fuchsia bouganvillea, the unbelievable blue expanses and, on clear days, the views to Catalina Island.
Today's high there will be 77 degrees.
Why don't you just go back there, then?
Because I love to suffer, and I'm good at it, too. I'm a lapsed Catholic, which means I don't have the church anymore to flog my soul. Nature abhors a vacuum and all that. The Houston Summer is my hairshirt.
But the weather isn't the only thing that keeps me here. I love how no-zoning laws result in streets that go like this: church, convenience store, adult bookstore, seeded lot, restaurant, elementary school, candy store, single family dwelling, church, convenience store, adult bookstore....
It makes no rational sense, this city. What reason-minded type of folk build their lives in a swampy, croc-infested, floodplain rife with mosquitoes and cockroaches the size of Ford Fiestas?
People like me, I guess.
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