Christmas in Brooklyn

M's charming street is lined with wrought-iron railings tied with red velved bows, awnings draped in lights, and houses with decorations that blink in time to holiday music. At the corner several Christmas trees lean up against each other, waiting to be bought, and the man selling them smiles at children whose colorful coats sparkle against the white port-o-potty that inexplicably reads, in graffiti,"rollerblade!"

There is always too much to say about these visits. I stayed in Brooklyn this time and saw (and tasted) some of the favorite haunts of dear friends, such as where Maya Angelou, Robert DeNiro and Lil Kim get their red velvet cake. I bought red patent leather shoes in the Green Point, ate Polish potatoes and drank the best coffee (with an amazing doughnut, but not quite as good as Congdon's in Maine, and their maple creams) at Peter Pan while chatting with old people. And then I saw some crazy good sculptures by the man who did the voice of Ludo in Labyrinth. I want to sit him down with Duane Hansen and listen to what they have to say. Only Duane Hansen is dead.

There were so many things I earmarked to record in my image journal, but I should have written them down then. Because now the old man repairing the edifice of the church is blurring at the edges, and the four girls in matching patent leather shoes are fading away.

all is quiet in the suburbs

The upscale suburban plaza with names that end with Walk or Terrace and begin with words like Evergreen or Peacock (then there's the Shoppes at ____ phenomenon) (all of which, for some reason, makes me think of this marvelous list), is taking over my mother's part of the world. Frustratingly, it's one of the few places to shop out here. We noticed the plaza we visited tried to distinguish itself from the nearby mall (oh so working class! garish colored lights! hot topic! santa's playland!) by piping in tasteful classical music rather than muzaked versions of "Feliz Navidad" and that perrennial Christmas favorite "The Heart Will Go On."

But strange and wonderous things do happen in the suburbs, and at this plaza we ran across a cadre of cloaked carollers: teenagers in black, cream and maroon hooded robes singing the Carol of the Bells and other unintelligible, but lovely, seasonal ditties.

Today on to Attleboro and possibly the great lights of La Salette. As I observed to my mother on my return, every region of the U.S. has its own particular take on gawdy, and I've missed the New England Catholic brand of ostentation.

revelations are few and far between, but when they come...

I was thinking the other day about how I needed to go to church again, or perhaps the river, or perhaps read a spiritual text. All this to say, I was feeling out of touch with the larger than my humble life themes. And then I had this epiphany: I have not been reading enough poetry lately.

portent addendum

Driving back from the grocery store, we notice a man walking up the steps of his porch. He is long haired, shirtless, with some sort of tattoo on his back. Vanessa and I are both watching him, in that way you watch your neighbors when they emerge from their dens: recognizing, ok, you, it's you who lives in close proximity to me. Then Vanessa says, is that a gun? And yes, we see, the man has some sort of rifle tucked under his arm. It's sleek and silvery and looks freshly polished.* Its these times we need to remind ourselves we live in Indiana.

*Lest you worry, it seemed likely it was hunting related, and he did not appear hurried or distressed.

portents

From atop the pines comes a scrambling and squawking. I look up to see a murder of crows erupting from and returning to the treetops, barely visible against the dark sky. It is an ebb and flow of conflict, rustling wings and branches in slightly different tenors. I pull my hood up and walk under the possibility of falling needles, shadowed in an old-fashioned silhouette against the sidewalk. No wolves in sight, though.

The next day, a man bicycles past, a quiver of arrows stuck out of the back of his pack. I think about the man in Rhode Island who killed another man, in a road rage incident, with a crossbow he'd pulled from his car.

We eat candy canes at the bar from a small glass cup. None of them are peppermint.

bloomington can be pretty in winter

back to poetry

I'm tired of narrative right now, and yet I can't quite escape it. In honor of this, I'm posting Misty Harper's beautiful poem, "Plot." I just reread Misty's chapbook (chosen by Charles Simic for the PSA Chapbook Prize) and it's so good. She does such wonderful things by impregnating common phrases with unexpected images. Here you go:

Plot
Never Fails. Slick with ice
then thick with blossoms.

Let birds subpoena the trees.
Let Miscellany loosen her ornate plot.

I was born on my due date.
I was placed on a red plate.

A nurse said O Sawbones
this one doesn't look too good.

Arithmatic of pestilence and light,
answer my hands their questions.
Answer my questions their hands.

new dress

The black was becoming oppressive.

oh and also (first lyrics post!)

It's Over
(Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan-Waits)

You must have brought the bad weather with you
The sky's the colour of lead
All you've left me is a feather
On an unmade bed

It's always me whenever there's trouble
The world does nothing but turn
And the ring it fell off my finger
I guess I'll never learn

But it's over, it's over, it's over
I'm getting dressed in the dark
Our story ends before it begins
I always confess to everyone's sins
The nail gets hammered down
And it's over, let it go

So don't go and make a big deal out of nothing
Well it's just a storm on a dime
And I've always found there's nothing
That money can't buy
I've already gone to the place I'm going
There's no place left to fall
And there's something to be said
For saying nothing at all

And it's over, it's over, it's over
It's done forgotten and through
No one cares what it's all for
You'll be buried in the clothes
That you've never wore
So keep your suitcase by the door
It's over, let it go

No one cares what it's all for
You'll be buried in the clothes
That you never wore
So keep your suitcase by the door
It's over, let it go
You gotta let it go
Let it go, let it go

today i am thankful for

good health. And the knowledge that the positive side of the close knit between my mental state and my physical state is that it lets me off the hook for being a miserable wretch these past couple days.

I can't stop listening to Tom Waits' incredible new album(s), particularly the song "First Kiss." Two songs at least on these albums mention Indiana. Holla.

Samrat gave a wonderful reading last night which opened with a sex scene from The Guru of Love in which monkeys interrupt the action delightfully and mischeiviously. His explanation was equally wonderful: I got the two lovers together in the temple and then I didn't know what to do with them. I didn't want to do a traditional love scene. His story "The Wedding Hero" from The Royal Ghosts showed astounding control of time, something which I'm struggling with. It made me grateful again for what I can learn from him.

blog as notebook

I'm taken with this Emily Dickinson definition of art I just stumbled across, in a wonderful little Slate photo essay on Joseph Cornell.

"Nature is a Haunted House - but Art - a House that tries to be haunted."

I like the idea that so much of what I do is hanging around, trying to haunt my house over and over again.

thank you soma

for playing Jerry Jeff Walker.

Pack up all your dishes.
Make note of all good wishes.
Say goodbye to the landlord for me.
That son of a bitch has always bored me.

If I can just get offa this L.A. Freeway without getting killed or caught.

cosmo's moon

Once when I was little I pitched an embarassing fit at the idea of renting Moonstruck, because I wanted something more "age appropriate." But my parents rented it anyway and after much stomping and huffing and slamming of doors, I crept down the stairs and watched the whole thing from the bottom step, peering around the living room wall. I'm sure my parents knew, even though I tried to be secretive.

Now I only want to be as tough as Loretta. I want to sit around drinking strong coffee and eating cannoli and little almond cookies with my mamma. To wear black all the time like a Sicilian grandmother. To exaggerate and turn over tables and compare everyone to feral animals. This is how it goes.

cnn headlines are often absurd

The demise of Encore has forced me to Starbucks where holiday music tinkles and the creepy men who are always here stare at me yet again. The next time the weak-chinned guy stares at me I'm going to tell him to put his eyes back in his head. You think I'm a nice person who is kidding about this, but I'm not.

Thanksgiving worked out! Way too much food, declamations, and Sailor Jerry, but fun was had by all.

I'm creeped out right now about this.

And I'm feeing as though there are an awful lot of stories in the news today about zoo animals. Is that what we turn to in the face of hundreds of deaths in Sadr City?

Hope never seems to stick around.

idle days

Has it seriously been a week? Here's the deal: A says I should be preparing for wintering in, hauling firewood and digging up the tubers and stirring the large pots of preserves. That the mind slowing down and the body speeding up is the natural course of events. I agree and that's been my life this week. Therefore no posts, only Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings and the way they alternately coddle and throttle their guitars. Only surrender to the sound.

Weekend, Weekend

Turns out herding MFAs really does get them out onto the dance floor. What with the rain tents and lights and the serious rock of Steven!, the MFA band, it was quite the time. Would that the rest of the weekend had been as work productive as that was fun productive. V and I have been ridiculous with our chit chatting instead of working (too fun!). I love it when she says things like "befitting her station."

This weekend's distraction was brought to you by The Queen. Beautifully done. It made sense when I saw that the director, Stephen Frears, had made Dirty Pretty Things, which I loved. Even though I'm not going to England this winter, I'm immersing myself in its culture (reading England, England now). This movie made me think about how having a female monarch presiding over the fall of the Empire might have contributed to the monarchy retaining what power it has; the film's illumination of the Rosie the Riveter aspects of the Queen's personality helped me understand the "progressive" element of her postion, which I think I'm generationally and culturally removed from. I've also been wondering what will happen to the institution in the coming male reigns. Which will happen soon, I suppose -- an odd thought.

I would much rather rake leaves and run on a treadmill than read right now. My brain is a floating balloon. But look at me avoid The Wizard of Oz which is playing out there in the living room and focus. Yes, look at me go.

"it's all right to feel things, though the feelings may be strange"

I wonder to what extent (my language is so inflected by teaching comp) my life as it is now could fit into the narratives of "Free to Be You and Me."

Tonight the MFA band (including dear housemate o' mine) is playing a party and I am obliged to go and cheer for them. I'm actually excited about it, though I've been feeling pretty anti-party lately. I need to practice guitar so I can some day appear with them.

All the leaves have dried up in the last week and the trees are shedding rapidly. It's as though Bloomington said, oh yeah, it's November, better get barren. Except that it's been very warm. The temperature in my house is so much cooler that I keep feeling tricked when I open the door.

I met our non-regular (subbing on days off) mailman today. I always love meeting the mailman because of my dad, and also because it's nice to know the face of the person who stops by your house every day. He was super nice, as is the regular carrier. I want to make them baked goods. Can't forget to leave the holiday card out this year.

Some hopeful news on the IR front regarding solicitations. Keeping fingers crossed.

"Let us take a turn about the room"

Is it a seminar foul when the professor has the flu but asks the students to have the class anyway? What if it's an election night and the students would like to watch the results come in?

V and I ate sesame chicken and broccoli and cabbage whipped up on the spot by me and watched the Midterm Midtacular. I was teased by multiple parties for my grimacing and fidgety involvement in the election results, but there is a long tradition of this, from Mary and my marathon Katrina coverage sessions to the Buffy crowd event mentioned over in Stoveland. It was a little bit like the feeling of following the last football game I watched. Familiar, old and exciting. Even if the stakes were ever so much higher. Perhaps I needed to think of it that way so I wouldn't be so sad if the results went badly.

V just wrote this beautiful line: "its wings as grey as timber beat upon the bulb."

I want to write all about Stove's visit, but she did it all. Suffice it to say, all parties including Barnaby are sad that she is gone. And a little worried that too much gossip was had. But mostly feeling the aftermath of her presence that made everything glow a little bit brighter in this dim November.

life starts again today

The Big Presentation is done, rawther well I think, and even though I went on for far too long and couldn't answer all the questions posed, I always feel that the fact that there -are- questions posed is a sign of engagement. Also, faced with concerns about just who is thinking about author intentionality anyway these days, I feel I acquitted myself well as a writer. I'm no fan of interpreting a work with an author's bio. in my back pocket, but when you're a writer, it's hard to argue that the author doesn't matter. I'm trying to figure out whether the author-function is the same as the implied author. It's all knotty terminology.

Anyway. It's chilly and my feet are freezing and I was happy to wake up from a dream of a plane doing barrel-rolls over the Great Marvels of the Western World (Leaning Tower of Pisa, Acrpolis, etc.) and not have to worry about a presentation or reading 25 stories. I bathed and read 10 and practiced guitar and thought fond thoughts of visitors from out of state. Really, it's almost cheerful.

one more delay

The clouds moving across the sky, the few leaves shuddering on the branches fingered out above us, the distant call of the freight train all made me think of Bard, of the Hudson, of Donna and of Dennis's songs about women and cities: "these are my mountains, these are my hills, the train runs through them, fills me with chills...the quiet titans, the monsters sleep, the locomotive, the river deep." The man skulking about the cemetary all in black cut short the excursion, but V and I held close and traipsed through the city streets nonchalantly nonetheless. When a big black dog tethered to an invisible leash leapt barking out of the darkness she became larger than life, told it to back off in a firm deep voice. We are brave girls, we. Forlorn sometimes, dreamy often, longing girls but brave.

I would ask pardon for the sentimentality, but I'm trained not to. No disclaimers. Take it for what it is tonight; tomorrow will be another story.

i feel like i know her but sometimes my arms bend back

Oh Stove, you're going to addict me to this thing.

Neko Case makes me feel like I should be hanging out at the Road House from Twin Peaks. Shaking my hips back and forth and twirling cherry stems like Audrey. It's very very warm out and I should be sitting outside, but I won't be able to see my computer screen. So instead: soft light and mint green variegated walls. Looking at a man with a waxed moustache (for reals) and a woman who once taught me Pilates. Both employees.

I would like to work out the vagueries of my thoughts on unreliable narration post-research into scholarship of The Remains of the Day, but I have a feeling that work had best be done within a paper form. So off I go to be productive.

stick leash:

what the little girl walking past the window is being dragged along with. Slightly unsettling.

As previously mentioned, it's homecoming weekend, and that makes everything rawther surreal (as Nanny would say). Today's example: V and I are having brunch at the Runcible, when a cadre of pleated-docker wearing young gentlemen come in and surround us in a sinuous l-shape. The group, we are told, is called "Straight, No Chaser," and they've come from Hillel House to sing us a ditty or two, after which they're going to collect money for "The Sudan, Israel, and" some other unrelated country that I've forgotten. I have to say, I've never been the biggest fan of acappella music, and their song that involved a distance between the speaker and the narratee, as it were, was a surround-sound version of pretty terrible. I mean, they were "good boys," they had nice voices, but sheesh. V made the highly entertaining observation that if we were a couple in the middle of a breakup, the song choice would have been highly traumatic.

Best Halloween costume gimmick so far: competition between "The Snuggler," the blankie-d superhero who went around the Vid giving hugs, and my friend A's "Intergallactic Love Warrior" that went around shooting folks with a love gun. The ladies seemed to love the love gun.

In a time of slutty "fill in the blank" being the most prevalent costume, I'd like to take the idea to the extreme. Slutty Eggplant, perhaps, or Slutty Trash Bin. Now that I think of it, though, Mary already did this best with her "Baberaham Lincolm" costume.

Saturday is a Work Day

There's something deeply satisfying to me about sitting here at this table in this cafe with all these stories spread out around me to read. Dozens. I'm listening to Radio Free Klezmer. I'm plowing through story after story about father/son relationships, most of which involve a)hunting b)fishing or c)camping. Then there's winter sports. Poor V has to deal with my constant stream of "never do this" in a story. The latest had to do with fabric stretched tight over women's breasts. Christ. She said she wants to write a story in which fabric droops over a woman's breasts. I say more power to her. I'm realizing why Jenna Blum was so anti-child narrators now, and why AGNI has a blanket policy. (That sounds like a policy to issue afghans to its contributers, but of course I mean a blanket policy against child narrators).

It's homecoming weekend and yesterday I passed a float that consisted of two large papier mache yams. How rad is that?

Stove, the leaves on the trees are still bright. I wondered to myself whether that would still be the case when you came, then realized you'll be here in 5 days, and how much can really change in that time? Yee-haw.

my house needs better insulation

I think that my broken power cord is perhaps too broken, because every time I plug it in the muscles in that arm begin to ache, and I can only assume an electrical current passing through is the cause.

V has found my blogs. We've traded so I've sat here noddling through old entries. Had I had my eyes closed, what would I have assumed I'd have remembered and what would I have predicted forgetting?

I've discovered that carrying around The Satanic Verses is quite a good way to meet people. I'm considering taking to reading it in public more often. My friend R once had a weird boxy outlet sort of thing in his room that we decided he should label, "conversation piece," and he did. I would like to label my book, "conversation piece," and wait for them to come. In class today S asked how many of us remembered the fatwah in the news, and I felt old, being one of two beside the professor who did. I felt older when it turned out S had been 5 at the time. My copy is my parents' from Royal Books in Franklin. I remember how everyone was talking about the controversy, and how my mom rushed out to buy the book, and it felt funny to write in its margins all these years later. It occured to me tonight that as awful as the fatwah is (and fun fact - it can never be revoked now that Khomeni's dead...it's an "endless arrow"), the severeity of the controversy is a kind of testament to the power of literature that seems oddly quaint in an age where controversal literature consists of Harry Potter, The DaVinci Code, and Danish cartoons.

I like sitting next to V on the couch and working (or not) together. Last night we dredged up old videos on YouTube, dreamed of playing PJ Harvey's basslines and rocked out to Snoop Dogg. We are total dorks and I love it.

I'm going to think about the postcolonial subject vs. the globalized subject now. And maybe do a little writing, too.

Synchronicity

In my dream I watched one of those "Monster Trucks" (as in Sunday Sunday Sunday at the Arena) drive over a smaller car and get stuck. I wanted to run away from the fire I worried would start, but PC was there and convinced me I should help rescue the children who she somehow knew would be inside. We broke in - suddenly it was an RV - and helped the children out. We had to step on hot flames. We had them jump into the mud and this was soft so they were fine. I was holding a child in my arms, running from the flames, when I woke up.

First thing I look at the news. On the Boston Globe Website, front page news, is a picture of a fireman holding a child in his arms, rescuing her from a fire. Not prescience, but still eerie.

Here at my favorite coffee shop in town, I am working next to a tapestry in the Velvet Elvis mode of Pope John Paul II. His thumb is stuck in a book.

Halloweeny

V and I went to the Grudge II as an effort to drive away the outside world. The theater was all but empy so we pulled up our hoods and watched between fingers and squealed at will. I think the last horror movie I'd seen in the theater was Scream. The scary things were so beautiful that I didn't want to cover my eyes -- only my ears for the crick crick crack sound that was so scary. And the pacing of the two narratives was intermeshed really well so that rest from tension gradually became points of even greater tension. And now it's cold and rainy and I'm going to go get coffee and think about reading and grading and reading some more.

Someone I know carved a pumpkin into a buddha. Sometimes all I want to do is facilitate seasonal fun.

this post is for

stove, who's right that I should be contributing more to the social experiment. So here's what I will say. This day began well, with actually getting up and making breakfast and writing. It began with waking up and not feeling the dread of alienation from loved ones. In other words, a relief of a morning. That the soy milk curdled when the espresso hit it was frustrating, the moreso that the soy latte was part of the treat for the writing, which though not entirely sucessful, happened.

You would do well to note the conjoined frustration and illumination; that was my day.

This morning: dear A sitting on the bed playing his guitar while his son P sat on the floor facing him, playing a recorder. They sang a song about a shark who turned into many different things, including a pumpkin. P did some rockin recorder solos. A kept asking P what happened next, and when P told him he would make up a verse around it. The verse about the pumpkin who drank juice that turned all his teeth red, except one tooth, who turned out to be named Fred, reminded me of one of the Camp Favorite Moose songs. You know the one.

Later P and I sang the most intense version of "Masters of War" ever. We stared into each other's eyes and I sang the real lyrics and he echoed with made up words that ended in the same rhythmic drawn-out growl as Dylan. That kid is one smart cookie. And he makes a good egg. I like that I can play the guitar well enough to sing a song about a museum with dogs on the wall instead of paintings.

I like that P listens to me. A good egg. Stove. I like my good eggs.

first week

Last night we went to the house the sculpture teacher is house-sitting and he made a nice stew, though it was probably 1 am. We went there because he had to put the sheep back in their home so the coyotes wouldn't slaughter them all. But the dance teacher and I miscounted 1o over and over, so everyone had to go mucking about looking for the 11th sheep. There's somthing funny about counting sheep at night. In the end it turned out the 11th sheep was in the pen all along, but we hadn't seen it. I swear we both counted 3 times. Sheep have little brains. It's amazing how they really do have one hive mind, move in a herd. Pee when they're scared. Their tongues are soft.

Today I've been reading Brautigan and The Catcher in the Rye, again. The latter to remind myself where my students are, the former because I'm really into reading fiction that is whimsical/absurd but entirely without irony. It's such an earnest sort of fiction, but it isn't exactly realism. Maybe it's just that it's such a particular reality - that it gives off that "truth is stranger than fiction" vibe. At any rate, I'm finding the sincerity of both first person voices refreshing.

I love my students. I love the fervour with which they reference things like Rashomon and The House of Mirth and Pillow Talk and MacBeth, as if they were the first/only ones to discover these wonders. I love how much they love to write. I love how they feel they've found a place for themselves here. I love their red leggings. I love their phrases of the day (moist gazebo). I love how much they love making little in jokes out of things like the word "meat" or the names of characters in old westerns. I love how insightful they can get about global affairs. I love that they can spend ten minutes discussing the rape line in Harjo's "Horses," unfacilitated. I love that they love each other's writing, even if it's different from their own. I love how amazing their letter poems were. I love their monkey haiku.

good eats

The connection between my Boggle word, "tony," and the pre-Boggle pic-a-nic was serendipitous and illuminating for those who didn't know the definition of the word. A Putney pic-a-nic includes grilled swordfish and pesto pasta, for those who were wondering. How am I ever going to manage to feed myself again?

at the putney school

Last night I saw these amazing mists dividing the verdant mountains. The frogs around the puddle make mating noises that sound like rubber bands. I wished I still knew all the names of the constellations. It's unfortunate that the Hubble has stopped working. The best words I acheived in Boggle were "dais" and "pieta," though someone had the latter. Among the longest was "latest" which I find amusing somehow. The stars here are outstandingly bright and make me want to travel out into Bloomington's open space more often. Everyone here is a Vermonter or is terribly transient or both. It seems to represent the two paths artists much choose between. I mean, not being a Vermonter, but being settled in a vibrant place that's cheap to live. Well, I guess the third path is NYC but everyone knows how I feel about that.

It's beautiful here, an oasis. Someone's utopia.

The kids show up tonight. I have a lot of work to do.

Up North

It's cold in Montpelier, finally, after the storm that blew the breezes from the river up. Miciah's furniture is all nicely arranged in her new living room that is so full of plants it inspires me to be better about getting and buying them. There are mermaids clothed in turn of the century frock-coats and holding parasols over the mantel. I really love river towns, especially ones in old, gentle landscapes akin to that of the Hudson Valley with rolling mountains in layers. But this town is so small that she runs into people literally everywhere we go, and B-town is seeming small enough to me these days. But it's been lovely to have nice coffee in round purple mugs on the porch, to talk all day - four hours accidentally, and now to be reading our journals together in the waning day with the nice music on. If only I didn't have to do the work I've been putting off. In a space like this, though, the work is much easier to do. I'm trying to make mental notes to cultivate this kind of environment on through the year. Please, can I collect you all together?

13 Lately things

1. Finally saw Rashomon. I know the nesting doll structure, the story told from the different points of view was what was supposed to be amazing, but I was most impressed by the baby at the end. Theme and variation - the unexpected that jolted the narrative and allowed the film to end.
2. I'm tired of random carpenters and plumbers in the room next to my bedroom. I don't want to wake up to tiling. That said, I think the new bathroom is going to be lovely.
   
3. I sounded really goofy when I was ten and trying to rock Belinda Carlisle acapella.
4. Devon is as wonderful as ever and he can still pick me up.
5. I'm too nice. Everyone in NYC wanted me to take their pictures. Corollary: digital cameras are a pain in the butt because people can be rude and ask you to take their picture over and over because they dont' like how they are smiling and then they can ask you to tell them Eddie Murphy jokes to make them crack up.
6. Never go to a "jeans" party with a bunch of beauty product publicists if you want to feel reasonably confident about your body.
7. I never realized Toxic would be so fun to dance to. Why is it that I can meet people in one night in NYC at some random loft, but I can't meet people in months in Bloomington? Espanol? No.
   
8. I'm not sure a terrorist zombie movie is such a good idea, in the end.
9. What's a strawberry moon?
10. Two days until Vermont. Farms, lovely Vanessa, good people.
11. I still love public libraries.
12. Mysteries written in the voice of the Prince of Wales circa 1900 are tremendous amusement.
13. An audio tape exists of my parent's wedding reception. My long-dead grandfather (mother's side) is speaking in Spanish to my then 14-year-old uncle (father's side). My father is so softspoken. Still the same rhythms of speech, thirty years later, but a slightly more Indiana accent. I've only listened to bits and pieces of it but the whole thing is a study in cognitive dissonance. There's lots of talk about Italian sausage and bringing in the beer in spite of the rain. It should make me sad, and it will, I know, but it's such a tremendous artifact that right now it simply makes me amazed. My father is 25 (!). But he seems just the same.
    

Funny Eyes

I've had them all my life. They are set wrong, like salt and pepper shakers that want to season each other instead of the food. At the optometry school where the exams should be cheap but are instead pricey and long, they make me a curiosity, a case study. And so I place one hand over my left eye, one hand over the right. Over and over I place and remove demonstrating the rapidity of the jump, how I compensate, accomodate. How accomodating I am. I am tired and my vision is bleary and it frustrates me to say, again, I can't see the two crosses at once. I do not have strong binocular vision and I'll never see the magic eyes. I don't want to be a lab rat any more. And this is all before, long before, the health center. Where unasked for prescriptions are filled and my history is taken by a frowning woman with cold, demeaning eyes.

Kicks

I own pink sneakers now. Sorry, Moose, didn't go for the Roos. But they're cute and you'd like them. The great state of Vermont will not apologize for its cheese.

Wednesday Night at the Harmony School Gymnasium

Contra-dancers all over the country are the same. The same grey-haired boomers with ponytails and shirts with ponies or lizards or sunsets on them, the same elderly men with small visible injuries tottering around too slow for the cadence, the same eco-friendly young-uns with gypsy skirts and bounce like they're listening to Phish, the same engineer-types who grit their teeth through the dances as though they're planning to socialize if it kills them. I get just as dizzy in Bloomington, though I miss Holman's afterwards with Extreme Television and absurd dialogue. It was nice, though, to find that after two years away, it came back easy as pie. That a man said, "I saw that gentlemen giving you directions, but you don't dance like you needed them!" For some reason tonight everyone asked if I sang or played music. Perhaps it's that the community here is so much smaller that people tend to immerse themselves in all aspects of the scene. I sort of got the feeling people were recruiting me. I never know what to say when anyone asks if I sing. Yes, all the time, in my bathtub, in my car, at karaoke, with friends. But not in a chorus, not out, not anymore. Someday I'll buy that concertina and be the sea-shanty queen. But jeez, I'm getting tired of pipe dreams.

too many nights out

The bag is full of underwear and the sweater song is on the player in the warm car. I am remembering the way my friends dance, bending my torso into those shapes, the shimmies and hip thrusts of tall slender women. The double wide gay bar is empty, relaxed, but the Vid is hopping, comfortable if sceny. Will I dream tonight? Old men haunt the crack between my pillows. Days I spend on the internet pricking those who have injured me. I am going to try on my bag full of underwear. The girls ride off in their cars to contact the boys and we string something that looks like love between our hearts like fishing wire.

seasonal change

Upped the weights today. We are all officially gym rats, what with the trash talking by the squat barbells. My arms are sore and it's pleasant and I got all the recycling out so there is that little bit of accomplishment. If only I didn't have the insomnia that makes you uncover pictures of your high school crushes and listen to "Crash" by the Cure over and over like you haven't in ten years. Rather, I should take out Vlad or Ernest or even Marjani, tuck into bed. But the house is so empty with Mary gone. It sings, this emptiness. So that I have to wheedle the ladies into dinner on the pretext of fragility in order to not be alone in it. Summer is a funny time here, full of new discoveries. In the kitchen some sort of rose is falling open fragrantly, reminding me of a moment of attention. There is room for strangers now, for library books and six days a week of workouts and drives down to the lake where billboards of eagles glow eerily in the mist. I saw a heron by the river yesterday. They are, I was told, "our largest bird."

Memorials

Last night the party was lovely, tomato plants in the windows, fragrant. So Portland what with the salvage wood houses and the full bar, the punk rock anarchist kids and the bike art. Bloomington is shrinking. The same people are everywhere, the nighttime people popping up during the day at the library or the coffee shop; the nighttime people look hazy in the light of day, not quite fully rendered. I must look like that as well, though the backs of my pants drag through puddles and the day thumps solidly around in my heart.

My aunt died today. Mother's Day of all days, proving the studies my mother oft cites about how people hang around for the big events: birthdays, Christmas. Her daughters were by her bedside. I remember the photograph of her in the faux fur and the red-tinted sunglasses walking along the Charles beside my far-less-glamorous mother. The diary en francais she sent me special for my birthday in the fourth grade, just after she had become an expatriate. The accent, muddled and continental, that my family mocked for years until I came to understand it, just this year, how she could forget she came from Chicago, Kansas, lands of flat and arid syllables. The scarf I gave her rich against her skin, festive over the purple pajamas. Her feet like a monkey's, little groping things. The separation of spirit and physicality so pronounced, her sharp mind a moving thing within a wizening body. How she was a writer and how important that always was to me. How it seemed to connect us at the end.

It's so cold and rainy out. This midwestern landscape she left behind. I feel very alone today in it. And I wonder again why they all scattered, those siblings, to nest in different parts of the world. What was so much more vital than kin? They're all hearing the news now. In California, Oregon, Georgia. In Connecticut my mother is alone in her little house in the Colonial woods. It just pains me, that solitude. And the solitude it begets.

I went to a cemetary today and read the names to myself. The gravestones without flowers. The old ones, the forgotten ones. It's comforting to me to think that someone is visiting my grandmother that way, her gravestone with the wheat etchings in Santa Cruz where none of her children live anymore. My grandfather in his mausuleum in Chicago -- someone will walk by and peep in and wonder who is buried there, what the stained glass means, who the flag was for. They're scattering my aunt's ashes in the channel. Between homelands, just like she always was.

so full

of pretzels. The Boston Globe didn't know what they were starting fifteen years ago when they published that street vendor First Night hot pretzel recipe. I think it could seriously contribute to peace in the Middle East. We just need to sit down the heads of states and let them gorge on soft and salty goodness.

The valentines were made, though for the most part not by me, who expended my creative energies on the aforementioned pretzels. The kids didn't get into the Hustlers, which was good. The girly magazines did provide for some funny Valentiney jokes. Thank you Kinsey.

Rick Moody is Cream of Wheat

At least that's what he says he's trying to make of himself, in people's eyes, so his work can speak for itself rather than being mediated by the public's conception of him as Author. (I am really tempted to make a Foucauldian Author-function joke here, but that's just too geeky). It's a great image though, Rick Moody and Cream of Wheat all mixed up together, and now the two will always room together in my mind. At the reading Rick Moody sang a realio trulio protest song. He made up lyrics about a soldier in Iraq and sung them to the tune of a traditional ballad that Fairport Convention once covered, which explains where I knew the melody. Later he said he was sad that there weren't any protest songs around anymore, with their directness, like in the old tradition. Well, he didn't say he was sad, he said something more eloquent than that, but I extrapolated a sweet desolation. There's something so brave about someone getting up in front of a roomful of people and singing a song a capella. His voice wavered at first and then he grew confident (there were about seven verses). Toi Dericotte sang at her reading too, just burst into song in the middle of an essay. She sang that heartbreaking Motherless Child song that is probably an old spiritual but that Eric Clapton revisioned. My Dad put the Eric Clapton version on a mix for me once. I wept when Toi sang, it was so beautiful. Rick Moody did not make me cry. But he did make me want to put on old protest songs and get fired up. Later, at the Runcible Spoon, we talked about Elvis Costello, karaoke, how thank goodness the O'Henry prizes are judged blind. He has an amazing Brokeback Mountain anecdote that I would share but this is a public forum and I feel funny sharing other people's anecdotes about famous people on it. But if you ask me I'll tell you. Tonight I have come to realize a sad truth about myself. I have the awkward habit of proffering ridiculous confessions/personal details when confronted with the need to make small talk with semi-famous people. I told Rick Moody about my embarassing experience karaokeing Mercedes Benz. I even mentioned the "soundrack" of handclaps. I told Toi Dericotte about my affinity for cooking with real pumpkin. Toi and I bonded over Icebox Cake so in the end I guess it all turned out ok. The Mercedes Benz conversation led to enlightening Rick about those cheesy videos they run while the karaoke songs play. Perhaps he'll go sometime and see them, and then he'll remember me.