Be Here Now

Who was it that fiddled while Rome burned? Nero? (Hell, who needs school when you have Wikipedia?) I am mentioning this because I have lately begun knitting. Or rather taken knitting up again. Long ago, during my "Earth Mother Period" I knit soakers, among other things, so no plastic would touch the skin of my infants (which, obviously, is another story all its own, and another lifetime altogether).

Living alone for nearly a year now, I am surprised at how little I've changed from the "me" of various chronological eras of my life. I like to compartmentalize these different phases, like Picasso's "periods". A version of the "Earth Mother Period" (like Picasso's Blue Period) is what I have reconnected with this summer. Knitting is both frustrating and consoling, just as I remembered. Determined to make "an Irish Hiking Scarf for everyone!" by Christmas, I have actually finished one and begun knitting #2. But it is time consuming, and as usual, I wonder if I am avoiding the truly important stuff. Am I fiddling my life away?

Shouldn't I be in Africa treating AIDS patients? Or adventuring around the world losing fingers to frostbite? Or passionately creating great art, which would be related to Nero's downfall, as he seemed to be more passionate about the arts and chariot racing than governing the Empire (which made him very unpopular with the army and the Senate).

AJ wants a book of my poetry. Bound by me. If that were the work of my life it would be enough. Whatever it is that I do or don't do, is enough. Isn't it? There is no difference between Clyde's life and mine, Huck or Mo or Auggie or Brad Pitt or someone treating AIDS in Africa. Rich man poor man beggar man thief, it really doesn't matter in the end, does it?

The trick is to fully inhabit the moment and not worry about tomorrow. I didn't master that in my "Be Here Now Period". I really haven't changed at all.

Take it Easy

I loved the Moody Blues. What a name, huh? In my youth I gravitated toward the minor-key, and even now I surprise myself by possessing no music to enjoy when I am happy. Well. This must change. My two-week funk-extravaganza seems to be subsiding and I find myself kicking around ideas for the new class I will teach (STARTING IN A WEEK!) in my head. I will consider this phenomenon "planning". Why not?

Georgia has reappeared in my life! She flew out to spend a week with Dolly, and I spent much of that week with them. It was a bittersweet visit, as Dolly has gotten worse. She forgets how to use the phone or coffee machine when she is flustered. She also forgets we are there unless we are in the room with her. But she is still feisty and fun and she and I played music in the mornings to wake Georgia. Bobby Darrin's "Splish Splash I was taking a Bath" was great for silly dancing at 9am. The day Georgia left, Dolly was throwing up because she had taken a double-dose of her medication. It was a sad parting. Georgia's last words to her son? "You should come out and visit. I'm going to be there for a long time."

My yard is in the process of being "cleaned-up". I ordered one of those huge containers and Huck and I filled it with cement blocks, the brush pile and other miscellaneous debris. Clyde hasn't finished the shed yet. After Royce got shot in the knee with a nail gun, Clyde's teeth started aching and he began having them all pulled. The dentist pulled a couple of bad teeth without giving him antibiotics first, and the infection spread into his jaw and beyond. His eye was swollen shut. So that little project is on hold. I haven't heard from them in a couple of days, and I'm wondering if Clyde's daughter (Royce's girlfriend) had her baby. They remind me how hard it is to be poor. One day Clyde drove Royce's loud clunker of a truck to my place because his truck died and needed a new engine. He got stopped by the county cops and they frisked Royce and harrassed them both, saying, "Your eyes look glazed-over. You got drugs in there?" They searched the truck, found nothing and eventually let them go without a ticket. Clyde says they jump to conclusions because of the way you look.

I set out to write something literal this morning and there you have it. University students are flooding back into town. It feels like autumn and there are already bright red and yellow leaves punctuating the landscape. The squirrels are busy burying nuts and I am headed toward nine months of a kind of hibernation. I think I will go to the theater and see Little Miss Sunshine today. Maybe rake a little. Do a little more planning.

Late August

"I always feel like I'm struggling to become someone else. Like I'm trying to find a new place, grab hold of a new life, a new personality. I guess it's part of growing up, yet it's also an attempt to reinvent myself. By becoming a different me, I could free myself of everything. I seriously believed I could escape myself - as long as I made the effort. But I always hit a dead end. No matter where I go, I still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I'm still the same old incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I guess that lack itself is as close as I'll come to defining myself." - Haruki Murakami

Artistic Control

In case you haven't noticed, I've added a couple of fashion sites to my sidebar. This one has become my focus lately and may be singlehandedly keeping me from going over the edge. When I'm feeling that I have an extreme lack of control over my life, (haven't you noticed?) especially my self and my emotions, it helps to focus. Go micro. Not unlike photographing flowers, it is a reprieve from thinking, or at least from over-thinking that is continually shooting out tentacles and forming connections with my inadequacies. Exhausting.

I find fashion complicated and interesting and smart. Of course there are ethical issues involved. It serves to set certain people (the rich) apart and it is a class marker. But fashion is also art. Stimulating, arresting, subtle and attentive to detail, it demands visual intelligence. And anyone can do it.

Fashion is an artistic presentation and we are all artists. The design of our surroundings, including our bodies and how we cover them, reveals our priorities and imaginative capabilities. Why shouldn't our world be full of visual interest and creative ideas? Anti-intellectualism and anti-art sentiment pervades large portions of our country. Dumbing ourselves down, we have sacrificed quality and beauty in favor of cheap uniformity.

Fashion represents control. Artistic control of ones' own body. How cool is that?

The Last Day

Where is the canoe
you promised would take us away
on this
the last day?

All fingers and lace
we sailed off
once upon a time
forever.

Now your tools are gone,
your table,
arrows. Your bow

And I,
all wet fingers and lace
stand waiting
in sparkling water

On this,
the last day.

History Deconstructed

"The only time I feel fear as others feel fear is when I think of you in harm. That is why I am on this porch, Ivy Walker." - The Village
The melt-down I have experienced in the past week caught me by surprise. Talking about it, in my mind, equals complaining, but I know that talking is what I need, even if it's uncomfortable.

Contributing to my crisis is "the job", which begins again on the 30th and for which I have done zero planning for the new class I will teach. Winging-it will be taken to new levels even for me, it seems. I actually had a dream nightmare about the first day of school. I was standing in front of a classroom-full of students and had done no planning. I was panicked and confused, but underneath it all I was curious. How would I perform under pressure? Could I bullshit my way out?

Another recent dream: Veronica's son (who recently has been in a series of unfortunate drug and alcohol-induced accidents and incidents involving the police) was driving a huge houseboat at an amusement park. AJ and Mo were passengers. He navigated to the middle of a lagoon and began speeding around in tight circles when suddenly the boat (which was towing another huge boat) flew into the air. It came crashing back down onto the water and then sped toward shore. I realized suddenly that the boat wasn't slowing down as it approached the shore. Crashing into the dock, it crumpled like an accordian. Running to see the damage, I was relieved to see AJ and Mo as little girls, sitting in their seats unharmed.

I am no longer my childrens' protector, and lately, awash in a sea of sadness, I realize I have no protector. There is no one who will appear on my porch if I am in harm.

I have given myself permission in the past few months to experience whatever emotional process might be necessary during a time like this. I have tried to just "feel", without thinking too much. This is not a pity-party, but stark reality. In the past year I have lost my husband to divorce, I have lost my mother to Alzheimers, my sisters have removed themselves emotionally and my children are in the middle of busy lives of their own. Even Veronica has receded, having found a new man to share her time.

Here is a new dream. Beginning to crumble, literally, like a statue, I am history deconstructed. In this dream no one can speak, as it has been for generations. Quickly turning to dust, in the nick of time I open my lips and breathing fire, I sear the virgin landscape, alter forever the ground that we walk on, change how we view nature, call myself by name and in the palms of my hands carry my children out of this chaos.

Life is Like Fashion

Some approach fashion in a highly structured and organized manner. They are concerned about fit, always look "put together" and are outwardly confident and in control. Career-minded, they plan a "successful" life and follow-through with every detail, including wardrobe. They are the upper-middle class.

Those in the lower-middle are lost in a chaos of current trends. Possessing no ability to self-evaluate and seemingly devoid of identity, their clothes wear them. They secretly want to be famous.

Some simply don't choose. Utilitarian and oblivious, the vast army of the working class unquestioningly toils along in pleated khakis and button-down shirts, maintaining the status-quo that ensures the wealth of the upper 2% of the population.

The poor focus on survival and use clothing solely for warmth and protection. No wonder they are reviled.

And then there are the upper 2%, who look a lot like the poor and seek invisibility. Their photographs are not in the tabloids. They don't have reality TV shows.

Changing our social status is nearly impossible. The markers that set us apart routinely change and eventually turn on themselves. Ultimately anyone who is trying to be "fashionable" reveals themself as "lower".

For what do we strive? What does fashion reveal about our culture? What does it reveal about our desires? Is it simply a class marker? Does it celebrate life? Whose life? Is it a vital art form? Who is excluded through the hierarchy of fashion, and why?

Flying Shingles, Wood and Scattered Nails

The guys who are working on my shed were recommended to me by a City Code Enforcement Officer as we stood in the courthouse hallway. It wasn't that he took pity on me, he was concerned that he'd have to hang around the courthouse all day long waiting for the judge to hear my appeal. The conversation went something like this:

Code Enforcement Officer (CEO): "Let's work something out. I'll give you an extension to fix your shed and clean up the brush pile and you will pay a partial fine. How about September 1st?"

Me: "How about you give me an extension and no fine?"

CEO: "Hey, I'm just a peon. I don't decide the amount of the fines. You have to get some kind of fine."

Me: Wanting to say "why?", but nodding in defeat.

CEO: "I know a guy who will do the work for you. He's honest as the day is long and a hard worker."

Fast forward a few days and the building crew is in my yard and in a flurry of flying shingles, wood, and scattered nails. The boss, Clyde, seems to know what he is doing, but who am I to judge? As usual I am distracted by insignificant details, like how very few teeth he seems to have, or Royce's (his future son-in-law's) homemade skull tattoos, or the other worker he introduced as "I guess we're cousins, ain't we?"

I have put my faith (and revolving home improvement loan) in their hands and I've decided not to panic when I see old shingles ripped from the roof and dropped onto plants in the herb garden. What the hell. I'll plant some more damn herbs.

Clyde seems to require that several family members accompany him while he works. His pregnant teenage daughter appeared one day and he introduced her by saying, "Yea, she's pregnant. What can you do? I guess he (Royce) is gonna marry her some day pretty soon." She was sweet. Exactly like a girl I might have taught at the alternative school. Immediately I see that her teeth need attention. She loves her man and has no self-esteem. I had asked Clyde if he would like one of the organs stored in the shed, and he brought her to see it. Later I stood leaning on their car with her and said, "Your dad says you sing!" "I sang kareoke a couple of times," she said softly. "And he told me you play the piano?" I said encouragingly. "Yea, I got a piano. It's been at my dad's flea market for two years. He wants to get the floor done first before he brings it into the house."

The day after I returned from NYC, Clyde, Royce and "the cousin" brought their chainsaw and cut up the fallen tree. They knew a guy (they called him Pudge) who heated with wood and would probably like to have it. Clyde described Pudge as a guy who "loves to work". "He works on the line at a factory during the week, but he likes to work on the weekends, too."

Soon after the crew began work the next day I called 911 after Clyde appeared at the door, telling me Royce got shot with a nail. He was crouched on the roof and the 4" nail had gone into his kneecap, apparently. He couldn't move, was in pain and after several attempts to get him down, Clyde had given up. Ten minutes later the ambulance and fire truck came blasting down the street, sirens blaring. It took some doing, but they stabilized Royce's knee and lowered him backwards off the roof and into the arms of several EMT's who gently placed him on the stretcher. I sensed Royce felt a little better when he heard the word "morphene".

The ambulance drove away and immediately my "Buddhist" neighbor came over to get the low-down. Changing the subject, I asked her if she knew who reported me to the code enforcement officer, but she had no idea. 'Everyone is a suspect," I declared! She, I'm sure, caught my negative vibe with her attuned Buddhist nature and hightailed it out of there to meditate and regain balance.

I noticed that Pudge, who showed up unannounced to haul away the tree at 7:30am the next morning, also had several missing teeth, one of which was a front tooth. Clyde's description of Pudge as a hard worker became obvious when, after he had finished loading the wood into his pickup truck about three hours later, I happened to look out the window and was arrested by the sight of Pudge, beer-belly covered tightly with a dirty torn t-shirt and thin hair clinging to the back of his neck, raking up fragments of leaves and branches with a stick! Actually I guess it would be better described as "flicking". It was slow going, I can tell you that. I quickly opened the door and demanded the obvious. "Are you raking with a stick?!" Unembarrassed, he looked at me and answered earnestly, "Yes."

Well. I quickly found him a rake, he finished the job in a very thorough manner (the yard looked better than it had in ages), and shining with grimy sweat he finally came to the door to tell me he was leaving. "I wanted your yard to look nice for you," he grinned.

Barometric Pressure

"There is something very attractive about a person with deeply held beliefs. Isn't there? It takes great energy and stamina, but the fortitude to maintain strong viewpoints is burdensome," she said. "What do you think?"

"Kiss me," he quoted.

Barometric pressure, with its' twice-daily cycle caused by the tides, presses in on me. The rhythmic variation is strong and all at once blood runs down my legs. Tampax, flowers, perfume and bikinis, we are silly girls, we play hide and seek with our animal bodies, we dare not bear our breasts. Our mothers walked with rags between their legs, cupped heavy blood-soaked wads of muslin in their hands, held it under the cool running current and watched the river run red. Then they hung the rags to dry and used them again.

"Take all of me," he unzipped his pants.

So I took his heart. Ate it. Grew fat and sexy as I extolled the virtues of fellatio and sodomy. Liberated, I went under the knife, shrunk my female fat zones, fell out of favor with artists and intellectuals, declared myself a sexy bitch and embraced a mixture of creationism and evolution.

"You are beautiful," he whispered. "Let me take care of you."

Home from NYC II

"The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one’s own home." - Theodor Adorno
To make a long story short, on Wednesday when I arrived home and was semi-unpacked and snuggled in (as much as possible in 100-degree heat), one helluva thunderstorm blew over the town wreaking havoc in my yard, not to mention probably more chaos at the mega-gargantuan-really-outrageously-oversized superstore at the edge of town where, as I waited for my film to be developed it became apparent that the power had gone out. Which reminds me. I think mega-gargantuan-really-outrageously-oversized superstores will play a big role in the apocalypse. (I am reminded of Girlfriend in a Coma.) Lots of drama will undoubtedly be played out in such warehouses of desire at the end of the world. Chance meetings, important realizations, deja vu experiences, meaningful relationships begun with total strangers and condensed into a few last seconds... Mark my words.

The sky was dark, the thunder rumbled overhead, the wind began to blow... hard! Loud and furious up in the air the trees churned like giant whisks stirring, frothing, creating chaos. I heard the tree's soft crack, deep background to the wind's tumult. When the rain hit in a torrent the tree was already on its side in the yard, heavy branches at rest on the roof and reaching out to the door where I stood.

The thing is, NYC seems like the center of the universe. Maybe I'm just desperately looking for a home when there can be no home. "Home" seems a very flawed concept, doesn't it? The representation of stability, the illusion of safety, the desire for permanence and ownership. All things unreachable, but that we spend our lives seeking.

Some snapshots from my time in NYC: Mo and AJ like two beauty queens, perched on the back of a convertible floating through the East Village. Mo conspiratorially asking once again, "Shall we do shots?" AJ scrubbing ashtrays and arranging flowers in her apartment. Pip jumping from his chair at 5am to earnestly relay what it means to be a "real man" (a subject that deserves future attention, needless to say!). Charming and generous Speedo (ha), sweetly revealing his nervousness at the prospect of spending time with Mo's dad.

The essence of this trip? Longing. Longing for more time. Longing for "home". The longing of lovers, longing between friends, artists longing to get somewhere, do something, be somebody. There was lonliness and sadness and drama! and chaos there. And there was laughter and music and lightness and joy. It seemed a lot like life. And I loved being in it.

Home from NYC

On the evening of the day I arrived home from New York another tree fell on my house. Is this a sign?

Surprisingly awake and energetic after driving for twelve hours, I sped into the deserted town where I live (it's hard to slow down after driving in NYC!) and screeched to a stop at the mega-gargantuan-really-outrageously-oversized superstore to get my film developed.

Later, comfortable on the couch I sorted through photos which unsurprisingly consisted in large part of microscopic actors on a stage. Perhaps if we hadn't been drinking 40's out of brown paper bags as we sat waiting in the park in Bedford-Stuyvesant to watch AJ's performance as a "dancing hooker", Mo the photographer would have found her way closer to the stage.



Whatever. I love bad photos.

The weather channel beeped a periodic warning as the sky grew dark in the west and thunder rolled across the sky above me.

*to be continued*