We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.

4 pictures of friday

2008-08-15T21:58:00.000-07:00

Three strangers pass each other on the street, each coming from different directions. They’re all wearing polo shirts with inch wide horizontal strips, but the colors are different. Grey and navy, orange and green, black and white, for five seconds they meet in space and from where I sit on the passing bus they form one single, stripey flag of cotton and bodies.

The planes are practicing their formations overhead. If you hear that loud noise, it’s already too late. If you hear the noise coming from the left look right, they’re that fast. It’s lunchtime and everyone is out walking around and nobody is looking at where they’re going because of this strange, combative dance of noise and steel in the sky above us. People collide, step out into the street without looking, stop in their tracks and point. One guy almost burns me with his cigarette as he rounds a corner, his head fully turned upwards to see a formation of three planes spiraling overhead.

I’ve heard people repeat this line over and over again. It’s from step 6. “having come this far, you have swallowed some large chunks of truth about yourself.” And sure enough, just to own it, this old man repeats it again. Just then a thought pops into my head. “Wonder what those will look like when they come out the other end?” I bust into laughter in the middle of the meeting. Sure I’m sober. Really.

Moon floats just above the horizon in a perfect pool of lavendar fading to pink. It’s glow is just the faintest chartreuse. It dares me to put something of such beauty and command onto a piece of paper. That might not be so possible, old lady. But I might just catch you in plastic.

digging in the dirt

2008-08-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

Christmas morning, 1978. So, I was eight years old. I’ve just opened up a box containing a plastic baby doll and I’m holding it up to myself, hugging it with glee. This was just what I’d asked for - the doll from the commercial, Baby this n’ that. It had arms that moved in different directions when you squeezed its toes (obviously something you need to practice for eventually dealing with a normal baby, right? Possible younger siblings would love that). The right arm went back and forth (so it could brush its own teeth or hold a crayon). The left arm went up and down so it could feed itself. Pressing a little toe made the mouth move like a real baby’s so that it could eat from its spoon or drink from its bottle. It ‘could’ eat. But the possibility of food rotting inside of a doll instantly got my mom to put a kibosh on feeding the baby. I did give it a bottle, once. It was just water (again, the rotting doll theory). It was just one bottle of water, but that doll peed for a long time! We finally just put in on a stack of newspapers until it stopped wetting itself. By that time, the rubber booties, concealing the pneumatic devices in the toes, were completely stained from the newsprint. Although, pink eraser helped get those marks off.

I look at this doll I cuddle so happily and a few things amaze me. First of all, it’s blonde with blue eyes. Come to think of it, all of my baby dolls were blonde with blue eyes. Why didn’t they bother to make color-correct dolls for little girls who were not toe-heads? I don’t get that. I remember marveling then that there were so few dolls to be had what did not have blonde hair. I had one Barbie – type doll with black hair. I played with that doll A LOT. I’m sure generations of non-whites felt the same way about handing their daughters plastic dolls with peach colored “skin”. Why bother when you can make a sock puppet?

I also wonder why the hair on the doll, though it’s new, does not look like the hair of the doll pictured on the box. It’s wiry and messy. Shouldn’t it at least have started out neat? I think at some point I put baby oil on the hair to tidy it up! Really the most interesting thing about dolls was the inside of their heads. I couldn’t pull the head off this n’ that doll because of the various contraptions that coordinated facial movement with toe-pressing. But I pulled the head off lots of dolls to see the amazing pattern of how their hair was sewn into their plastic scalps. I wondered if my own hair were attached in a similar fashion.

Hair – I always had a thick mass of hair, right from the very start. For some reason moms go ga-ga about keeping their daughters’ hair long when they themselves keep it cut short. I had this terribly long mop (and I do mean MOP) that constantly resisted being restrained in ponytails or buns and was insufferable when let loose. In this image my hair is up in a loop (make a ponytail and wind the length back through the rubber band a few times). And my hair is all breakage from the constant pulling back with rubber bands. I tried cutting it myself once I was so sick of it. Bad idea.

The smile is cute. I’m in the middle of loosing teeth. The incisors are in place in the front and the two on either side are making their way into their crooked form. If we’d taken me to a dentist we’d have known that my cuspids weren’t coming in at all. My whole face is in an awkward state of transition from baby sized to something bigger. I don’t seem to be noticing.

Why the hell did they give me dolls and why did I ask for them? I see dolls now and just… I don’t understand them. The one stuffed animal in my possession is only there for the sole reason of having been a gift of exceptional cuteness. Although I did take it to therapy once when I wanted something to cuddle. When someone comes to my house for the first time and sees my stuffed animal I am compelled to quickly explain and validate its presence. I squeeze it’s tummy. It says “whoooo!” Case closed. I look at this picture and just think it’s absolutely silly. I asked for dolls, but I really played with trucks and liked to dig around in the dirt. A set of garden tools would have been perfect as I distinctly remember spending the following summer using flat stones attempting to dig a hole to China in the back yard. Or a brand new hoe – I know that playing in the dirt would occupy more of my time than the relationship – obsessed dolls of those doomed-to-be-a-girl. An erector set or some modeling clay would have been great. Or two paint sets (with extra amounts of pink paint!) would have been great! I wasn’t necessarily playing with the wrong things as much as thinking I should play with the wrong things for who I was. Dolls? BABY dolls? What was I thinking? Kids are supposed to have some measure of unconscious, pre-adult honesty. Was I missing mine? Or had I already been told too many times by television and siblings what I should want? I was happy to have this doll that I’d asked for and didn’t know what to do with it. I tried taking it to bed with me to cuddle, like I’d seen girls do with dolls in pictures, but it was hard plastic. OW! Eventually the little spoon it came with would assist me in my outdoor activities.

I brought the doll in to school for show and tell in January. Peggy, one of those people I called a friend who, now that I think about it, never acted like a friend at all, had also gotten one. She actually LOOKED like her doll, with her light eyes and hair. I guess we could have sat down and played with our same –type dolls together. But we didn’t. I put my doll away, took it home, didn’t play with it much after that. It remained in near-new condition (except for the hair which never looked new…) at the bottom of the wooden doll crib grampa Joe had made for me. I had holes to dig in the back yard!

Another passing storm

2008-08-07T20:45:00.001-07:00

“Love it away” she says. Look at that dark cloud and love it away. I glance up from my work. It’s early yet but the sky has gone to night. Storms roll through the city, lightning like a monster on the loose. Water pours through the glass and steel walls like they are made of chicken wire. It hits like a wall out of nowhere in what was such a sunny day.

We were doing so well. How dare you cancel time with me to be with HER? Her night is Wednesday! This was supposed to be my time! Once the vapors gather, clouds thicken quickly. Why is it you keep trying to get me to state my opinions just so you can bash them about with your personal take on things? You say you’re trying to convert me into a non-liberal? Hey! Did I ever sit there and try to change YOUR mind on anything? Did I ever say that anything about you was unacceptable to me? By the way – I’m a little sick of having a partner who’s not interested in morning sex. So fuck you. There are a lot of people who’d be plenty happy to spend an evening with me. Think I’ll go out to dinner with one of them now! Hear the thunder, here comes the lighting. ZAP. You’re almost gone, “sweet heart”.

I can’t compete with that 3-year-old daughter. There is a joy he gets in playing with the tot in whose features he sees his own that spending time with me will never render. She brings a joy to his life that I don’t. And it’s a joy that something tells me I have never brought to anyone’s life.

“That’s not true.” she says, again.

The question just under my rage is just this - “Who is going to love me best?” As soon as I verbalize it I know how selfish it sounds. Black sheets of fearsome rain pour through the best defenses of maturity. I’m drenched in knowing I won’t get enough of what I want. Self-pity is making party favors in the kitchen. But there it is, the craving to be on the top of the heap and the suspicion that I belong on the bottom.

I go hunting for answers back in the source, my I-Ching, my family photo album. I don’t know when this one was taken, but I must have been just shy of 3 years old judging by the toys I’m holding. That big vinyl easy chair where Dad always sat and watched television (hence it became known as the “daddy chair”) doesn’t yet look as cracked and depleted of stuffing as I remember it. That crazy chair would leak bits of foam such that it had to be swept under regularly. But in this photo, it’s new.

I remember that chair, suddenly. I remember piling in there next to my dad, squeezing into the space between him and the armrest. He’d remark that I was getting bigger as it got tougher for me to fit in. (I wasn’t the only one growing bigger, thanks to mom’s cooking, however.) I don’t remember when the point came that I stopped getting into that chair. It doesn’t matter for this memory, though. For that time, in that shot, I was wedged in good. Having to have all of my dolls with me at all times, the chair is a pile of me, dolls, and dad. The smile on his face is just so happy. He must have been out mowing the lawn or downstairs working on those cars judging from the work clothes he’s wearing. His hair is still dark and from the shape of his face I can tell he still has his teeth. He’s still relatively thin in his face and I can see the vestige of that handsome young guy mom married still there. And there I am. Holding 3 near-naked, beaten up plastic baby dolls and my Dressy Bessie, face dirty, hair in a “palm tree”, squished in under his arm, just a baby, still oblivious. I’m in that stage of violent play and steamrolling my way through growth. The satisfaction of that moment, the payoff in the shot, is all on Dad’s face.

I’ve seen the wedding photos, I’ve seen the valentines and anniversary photos. This smile is not in those pictures. It’s here. It’s mine. It’s like daddy’s nudging me through the ether, “Tootsie, I loved you best.”

He must have missed it after I no longer fit in the chair. I didn’t. It never even occurred to me that I was in the business of growing up. The toy car I fashioned out of a cardboard box had no rear-view mirror. It never occurred to me that I meant anything to anyone. It never has.

What do we get into these relationships expecting? What long lost piece of me is supposed to come flying out of him? Am I expecting him to be “Mr. Right” or “the one”? yick! If I don’t hold those sorts of expectations over this then I won’t have to start resenting him for failures of perfection that I out-picture into the future! I get along much better with people when they don’t have to be my savior. Did I mistake him for being the source of love in my life?

Lets get one thing clear, thunder cloud, I am my own source of sunshine. I am my own source of love. You can rumble and zap and dampen my day, but you can’t take that away from me.

He has to spend time with the 3-year-old. He has to fill photo albums and go on camping trips and keep her close because she will forget. She will turn into a teen who thinks her parents didn’t love her right because that love didn’t show up in just the way she wanted it to (even though she won’t be able to spell that out, precisely, when asked). He has to sacrifice the time now because it’s his job to remember, to be her mirror, to be a road home through the angry stages of growing up.

I manage my way to the subway through the underground tunnels. From the train I watch the lightning tear away at the night sky with deep, violet gashes. Its rage is passing off to the East. Before I head upstairs I check the mail and I’m surprised to find a card from mom.

I get cards from mom all the time. The poem in them is usually nice and she signs it “love mom XXOO” at the end. And I keep them. This one? She’s filled one whole side with a note. I’ve never seen this much of her handwriting in one place and I’m amazed just at the quantity of it.

“Thinking about you and your milestone achievement and how proud I am of your determination. You have proven to yourself and me that you have what it takes to do whatever you want. I hope you do something fun for your anniversary!”

oh yeah, that’s right. None of us is here to be “loved best”.

It was 10 years ago today

2008-08-03T21:31:00.001-07:00

These old ladies just about mom’s age, they’re like fans, sort of. Every so often they come up to me with slaps on the back and congratulations on the fortitude it’s taken me to stay single all my life. This was unthinkable in their youth and a status they’ve only attained and relished in later years (after HE kicked off). There’s a tacit admission into their ‘old girls’ club, like I’m smart enough to be one of them - like I’m strong or something.

I love these ladies, Pat, Marie, Cathryn, etc. I don’t deserve quite a lot of the good fortune in my life but this especially I cannot take credit for. Maybe it was an accident or a miracle, but independence certainly wasn’t in my plans. A life of feminist-self-determination wasn’t my fantasy. It was a by product of living in a time when I could take steps to make sure that all my romantic faltering did not get me pregnant. I wasted quite a lot of energy planning and hoping only for a life of being loved and cherished despite my not really having a marriageable character. Nuala was right about me.

Going through my old photos and attempting some sort of literary reconstruction of self from these images has taken up the past couple weeks efforts at this keyboard. I look at pictures of sisters, dogs, parents and grandparents, stringing it all together, focusing on one image by one image like working a rosary. It’s a meditation in empathetic family forensics, but empathy is not enough. What has being a female at the turn of the millennium meant to me and how have old and new ideas filtered into the example that is my life? Why don’t I play fair and look at myself for a change?

I can’t believe I actually wore a skirt like that. Must have still been shaking off a bit of the art-school hippie factor when I bought that long, crinkled affair with the loud pattern and put the rope bracelet around my ankle. I paired it with a coral t-shirt, possibly to hide a bit of belly. Must confess, still do that. I’m 23. I’m poised on some rocks at the harbor of Salem, MA, like an odd Venus just washed up out of the icy waves. Behind me lay just ocean, some ships in the distance and blue sky.

Oh yes, I remember that girl. She’s on a date with the first of many hostages. I was making precious little money with the work at the theater company and none as an intern at Chedd Angier. But that guy, André, had a knack for catching me eyeballing something in a store and handing it to me later. I had to learn to stop looking at things if I wasn’t quite serious about owning them. Recently, I visited the self-constructed library that I left in storage 5 years ago and retrieved one item Mr. Butterfly (yes, that is his name) handed to me after a visit to the MFA store in Boston. It’s a book full of color plates showing ukiyo-e woodblock prints by Yoshitoshi: Thirty six ghosts. Stunning work. I’ve since expanded the collection with Yoshitoshi’s Women and One hundred aspects of the moon. See there? I remember the gift more than the giver. How’s that for a nice girlfriend? But the fact is I liked having someone who would drive all over to see me, pick up the tab and give me stuff.

Right there I stepped out onto a slope what slips straight into marriage and babies despite all of the books I’d read in college and the consciousness raising groups where I had noisily voiced my independence. I simply failed to hit the mark in my slide. The credit for that doesn’t go to strong mentoring on how to be a modern woman. It goes to Jack Daniels.

That girl in the photo has already been drinking hard for over ten years. That girl in the photo has the emotional maturity of a twelve year old despite having the parts of a grown up. She wants to be loved best while she gives nothing away. She thinks people are disposable, starting with herself. She’s in the midst of a period of controlling the drink. One day soon, though, reason enough will turn up and the genie came back out of the bottle. André? One day she’ll just never pay him a call back. That’s that.

Some car just went by outside with the radio turned up and I could hear the first few guitar strains of Sgt. Pepper’s. “It was twenty years ago today…” Paul’s voice trails off down the alley. The only time I listened to that album stem to stern I had drank some of this and smoked some of that and I had to lie down because I couldn’t keep the music out of my eyes. The walls were breathing. I sit here thinking about that intense hallucination and the sense that I had opened a door, stepped out of a limited self into a field of color and sound.

You know, it was never about how much more (or less) intense the intoxicant of the day made things seem… it was about the dreams and feelings I couldn’t enter without hiding behind a chemical mask. It’s about those doors I couldn’t open without the artificial gateway past fear. It’s about finding a way past the lies. The conflicting fairy tales I bought regarding what it is I should achieve as a college educated woman and what I should want by virtue of being female are just lies. Lies and crap. But knowing that doesn’t change the fact that there are aspects of both I would very much like to cherry pick. It’s taken me longer to realize that these fruits are merely the by-product of the much longer process of self actualization (a word waffle I’m still figuring out). Happiness is not a goal at all. It’s a side effect of right living; of being my own cherisher and finding ways to give the rest away.

My latest theory is that there is a person I was put on this planet to be and a voice I’m here to express, however small. But that girl in the photo is not even close to finding the right road toward actualizing such a role. The universe had to get my attention because it knew I wanted it to. It sent in something so I’d have to slam on the breaks and change direction. It sent me Jack Daniels. I thank Jack for beating me into a state of reasonableness. I thank god that Jack didn’t kill me.

Heart shaped box

2008-07-27T19:28:00.001-07:00

I remember her making that gift – the one she holds out in presentation and that he accepts with a chubby grin. I remember her finding the red fabric, heart shaped box, that probably once held chocolates, and lining it with wax paper. The chocolaty goodness that had been cooking on the stove all afternoon was then poured in and leveled off and the works was spirited into the refrigerator where we couldn’t get at it so well. Our little arms were not yet strong enough to open the door or reach the top shelf.

Hours later the heart shaped box came out and the thick liquid had hardened into perfect fudge. She got out the frosting kit normally reserved for birthday cakes. With a pointed piece of wood she scratched out the words, “I love you” across the heart. Then, putting the writing tip onto the red frosting tube she scripted the words out properly. Changing tips she added a few rosettes. The wax paper was trimmed, the top was put on, and the works was presented to dad for Valentine’s Day. And that’s this photo. She holds out the opened heart box as she leans over his chair. The sideburns his barber insisted on cutting into his face are lifted with the grin of acceptance. The 3 elements, mom’s face, box of fudge, dad’s face, pose frontally for a shot one of my older sisters must have been trained to take.

It would take a novel and a half to map the faulty, subterranean lands beneath the surface of any relationship. Here, I need not bother. One sentence will do. I knew even then that this photo, this act of chocolate, was a lie.

They lied because the truth was beyond the scope of who they were both brought up to be. They lied because they had both said words investing themselves into a cultural fairy tale of love and marriage without realizing that in their hearts each held very different views of those two words. They lied because it’s easier to pretend and do strange things in chocolate than to admit that a dream had soured; that in fact the ideal held out to them as a possible state of wedded bliss was personally quite destructive. Dreams are best left as such if they prevent one from asking honestly each day what the relationship means. The truth is they didn’t have words for the truth. But it’s easy for me to criticize. I’m not 22. It’s not the early 60’s. The pressures to conform in my life are mere annoyances – like flies floating about a light. ZAP!

I remember Mom’s fudge. Now that lady knew how to cook. People rave about my cooking, now. I make soup. I make stews, I use garlic in intelligent ways, and I’ve been known to even torture chocolate into a mousse to gain crowd approval. I can look at a pile of ingredients and figure out something to do with it provided I have kosher salt and amchur powder (ahhhh! Secret ingredient!). But it’s all very random. Unlike mine, mom’s cooking always had a purpose. The cakes came from a box and the frosting from a tub but the writing on the top and the frosting flowers she made herself. There was a craft. She makes jam with the berries picked in the summer. She focuses yams and pineapples into her famous candied sweet potatoes. There was always some tradition or favorite dish to be upheld. There was a meal to be made that must be different than yesterday or embellish the pleasure of a summer evening. Me? Put a recipe in front of me and I become a cripple in the kitchen. I tried to make potato salad this afternoon. The result is a mix of roasted organic potatoes, crisp organic celery and home made aioli which, though very tasty, would curl the toenails of a potato salad purist. Next time I add bacon, too!!

They were already fighting about money. They had already realized the falsehood of their assumptions regarding how each would continue or support the other’s hobbies. They were tired too soon. But at that point they were still trying. She still thought he’d get a decent job and give up the old cars and marching band. He thought she’d play along with his whims without posing too much opposition. They don’t see the real storm on the horizon.

I still get the horror stories from mom, now that she is the survivor and able to get in the last word. Her “oppressor” is beyond the Lethe. His half of the picture, what it was he received in that heart, has faded to nothing. And nothing is where the works will stay. I can’t waste any more energy contemplating the dynamics of what went wrong for those two. Despite the desire I will never manage the perfect act of mending what they spent 43 yeas tearing apart. I didn’t fall for the dream. I don’t need to contemplate destruction. Not today. My empathy is best spent on the living.

The lot

2008-07-17T22:21:00.000-07:00

There was no special reason for us to be lumped together as such. We were a collective accident of demographics, time, and geography all standing together on paper covered risers in front of the stage during the spring of 1976. Singing "It's a small world after all" with yellow construction paper graduation hats propped on our heads we graduated from kindergarten.

Some of the girls had new dresses, easily spied by that long 70's look with a ruffle along the bottom. Most of us wore something probably a bit older, maybe a hand-me-down from an older sister. Kids grow so fast. And trips to the mall for something new just weren't on the map back then. The dresses are nice, but they have the high high hemlines of a few years earlier. My dress was older still, from before the hemlines went up in the first place. But I loved it. It doesn't come out so well in the photo, but I remember it was a blue chiffon with little pink flowers sprinkled all over it. This was before the years of being teased for wearing clothing about 10 years out of date and it didn't yet occur to me to despise how mom dressed me. Although, now I look at these pictures and realize my dress was perfectly fine. And we did much better than those plaid pants that all the boys wore. (WHAT were they thinking?) I look at the mix of patterns in the fabrics and see the explanation for why I insist on only wearing solids, today.

Some of the kids in this bunch would grow up and thin out. Some wouldn't grow too much taller than they were here. There in the front row is Dan, the kid who loved orange (which he pronounced "ah-nj") and would always hog the orange paint during finger painting. He also stole my pencil case (which, ironically, was orange). Oh look, he's wearing an orange shirt with those blue plaid pants. Yeah, he disappeared after 3rd grade. Behind him stands Justin. I could never figure out how he always managed to do things wrong like piss off the teacher or get bad grades. Now it occurs to me, he was dumb. Right in front of me is Fred, who would go on to be our class valedictorian and who at that age was probably already doing trigonometry in his head.

Next to us stands Miss Clear, the most breathtakingly ignorant teacher I have ever suffered in my entire life with the possible exception of Carol Bankherd. First of all, with a poochie belly like that she should have known better than to wear those diagonal stripes (hey, what good is unearthing the family photographic coprolites if you can't be catty about fashion). She put all of the tall kids on the front risers so they neatly block everyone else. And, to boot, she always called me "Carolyn". Thus began the battle of a lifetime. That's not my name.

All kindergarten just seemed like some weird ideas for playing. I had no idea at the time the amount of stress these people were under to quickly assess us and put us into proper boxes of like-level-intelligence kids. I'm convinced they had me all wrong. How dare they assess me by their own boringness?

Well, it's about 32 years after kindergarten graduation and 20 years after high school. Tomorrow I get on a plane to go see what happened, and what's left, of the lot of us. I think it was a bad idea to attend this shindig. They'd do just fine without me, I'm sure. And I'd do just fine without a trip back to "my roots". Roots? please! Roots are something to be ripped up by or something to color correct once a month. I'm told I'll have a chance to gloat, but if that's supposed to be the carrot, I'm not biting.

I should be packed. I haven't started. I'm just getting cold feet on the verge of going back there and waiting for some force to come up from behind and make me jump in.

A friend like Ben

2008-07-16T20:50:00.000-07:00

“What’s HE doing here?”

“He lives here.”

“Mm!”

He sat quietly by the back door, like he had on so many afternoons. She’d been letting him in for the better part of two years and it was just her little secret. By mid afternoon she’d see him out there, sometimes looking cold, sometimes he looked as lonely as she felt, so she’d let him in. He was well mannered, stayed quiet, and when he could hear the distinctive rattle of the his old lady’s car as it drove up the hill, he’d get up, letting her know it was time to go.

But not this day. This day he came bounding down the hill and she already had the door open. He came in, sat down, and never left. We all came home from school and noticed him sitting there, unable to break his habit of sitting in the usual spot.

“Why is he in here?”

“He lives with us now.”

We showed much more excitement about this than our dad did. We liked him and would offer him food, play with him, go on walks with him and generally maul him like children do to any unfortunate, gentle natured creature. We all did our best to curry his highest favor, but I look back through these photos and there is no mistaking it. Benji was always Mom’s dog.

He gravitated toward sitting next to her. Even at meal times, when the rest of us would happily drop him some lima beans or bits of hot dog, he’d park by her feet. When he got up to investigate she knew we were feeding the dog at the table and yell at us. I see him next to her as she poses in a pair of shorts and remember that this fluffy little mutt was her “white shadow”. Up the hill with the laundry, room to room with the cleaning, whining at her door in the morning when it was time for her to get up, parking himself next to the couch when she sat down to watch the news and accidentally fell asleep (which happened often) and growling when anyone came near her, he had picked her. Mom was alpha.

El would grab him and pick him up insisting “he’s my dog!”
Rocco would grab him into his room at night and insist he sleep at the foot of his bed: “he’s my dog!”
Alice and Rita had the sense to not get into that game. Although Rita did use him in a photo project for the fair that went on to earn a blue ribbon at the state level. She took pictures of him after he rolled in manure (and suffered a subsequent bathing) and wrote a narrative verse that went with it. Very cute.
I used to eat lunch with him, sharing generously the bits of sandwich mom had left for me to eat. We all wanted to think we had a special talent for talking to the animals, I guess. We all just wanted to be the most special to someone and a dog is the easiest, most transparent source of such a thing being possible. But that’s where our first lesson in affection fell through. You don’t force it, you don’t earn it, it’s given. It’s like the futility of going out and looking for a lover and forgetting to grow that love in your own heart.

In 1980 we all sat out in the back yard under a canopy of trees enjoying a cookout and toasting marshmallows. Must have been a bit chilly, we’re all in sweaters despite the season. We’re on the ground, circled around the hibachi and holding sticks with toastables over the embers.

I look around the circle of us and, well, just let myself react. I still look like a kid, with my hair done up in the loop that mom would use to keep the long locks out of my face (and whatever cruddy thing I was playing in). Rocco is wearing plaid pants and for the first time I see his overbite. Rita is only, maybe 13, but she looks absolutely beautiful with the wind going through her hair. Alice had learned not to smile because of her front teeth. After about 13 she started looking serious in pictures to hide them. El, well she just looks like El, big smile and big boobs.

And there’s mom. She’s sitting there comfortably. I look at her feet and notice that her bones aren’t poking holes in her shoes. Her hands look worked but not warped as they do now. And propped up right next to her close, turning to give his best smile to the camera, is Benji.

In the background is the wood pile that would, 8 years later, be the spot where we would bury him. He went out for his constitutional one winter morning like he always did. Sure he was aging. But like any old codger he wouldn’t give up those things he always did. He got turned around in the snow, ended up in the road, and the rest he’ll fill me in on when I see him again, I guess. Mom stood at the back door calling and calling for him, making herself late for work. Finally she had to go. We were home from school for Martin Luther King day (a new holiday back then). A few minutes after leaving she was back. I hadn’t left my room yet but could hear it her voice. She found him, pulled the furry body with purpling flesh into her car, never minding any mess, brought him home and sat him by the back door.

the chain

2008-07-14T20:40:00.001-07:00

On Sundays there would be old films or shorts on TV. They would be black and whites. “Laurel and Hardy”, “The Little Rascals”, all the Bing Crosby movies where he was still young and slim, were colorless images sculpted only from luminosity. I thought the world was black and white, back then, and used to ask my dad when color was invented. “Why did people only live in black and white back then?” He’d just chuckle.

They must have missed out on a lot with that kind of photography. You couldn’t be permitted the luxury of how blue your mother’s eyes were that day. The odd detail of three strangers at a bus stop all wearing red t-shirts would be lost on the black and white photograph. It’s all grey going to black. But then, no image printed on paper can capture the smell of the flowers or the sound of your mom’s call. Some things just stay lost.

I found two photographs today. I had scanned them at separate times, put them into separate folders, but now realize that my categorization was a mistake. Sure, they’ve obviously been shot with different cameras and in different seasons. But they’re both dated the same year. Both taken as the sun plays a similar angle across the north east side of grampa’s white painted, wooden clap board house. Both show someone I know myself to be related to as they pose, casting light onto the film and a shadow across the yard. All this time I’ve had the images separated. They must have been taken within a few months of each other, some time in 1946.

In one my grandmother, unknowingly just 7 years from her transition out of this world and who was to become my older sister’s namesake, stands in her kitchen frock holding a treat out to an anxious black and white (of course) dog. The pleased smile making its way across her face has moved across that of my dad and sisters, too. Her hand blurs a bit as she dangles the treat to the pet who smiles back. Behind her the branches on the shrubs are empty, although it must have been a warm day as her arms are bare. Well, even as late as May some plants aren’t coming back yet. But the only flowers here are on her dress.

From the background in the next photo, I can see it was quite a garden. Sure, the leaves are a dark grey in the photo. But the plants shout their green. The phlox and obedience are growing well, the climbing shrub has nice, thick leaves, and the lilies are preparing to bloom. It’s late June or early July and my dad stands in the same spot, before bushes whose branches have bloomed decadently. In front of such floral richness my father looks gawky and strange as if his body desperately needed the fattening up mom’s cooking would provide. He wears his band uniform. At 17 in 1946 he wouldn’t be going into the military and go to war, so this was his one chance to wear something crisp, formal and obedient. Although, I imagine that really his dream would have been to go into the military and play with a military band. Wait, Early July. Of course. He was going to play for the 4th of July and his mother took his picture in uniform. The aspect ratio of the photo is more shoe box – that’s how I know it was her box camera. That same box camera was responsible for the wonderful photos of my dad and uncles growing up. I know it was her eye that took this photo as she was much more careful to frame her subject against the backdrop of the garden rather that dead on against the clap board house. Maybe grand dad took the picture of her and the dog. He was proud of his house. She was proud of her garden.

Some of the earliest questions about myself that I remember asking of my parents were not the supposed “where did I come from?” I don’t recall ever giving a shit about that, actually. Storks? Cabbage patch? I knew the truth was not coming on that subject. My questions regarded those things about me that connected me to them and to those people before me. Who did I get my eyes from? Who do I resemble? Where did I get this from? I look at that woman and know I have bits of her in me: funny colored eyes, long fingers, high cheekbones, dimple in the chin. As I’ve gone through her photos and seen how she saw as well as her subjects I know that from her came the photography and art. From her came the Saturday mornings in the flower garden. I wish I could sit down with her, talk for a bit. Would we get along?

These family photos play an abnormally large part in my art work. I write about them, and I spend unhealthy amounts of time with these bits of ether and light. Truth is, they are my rope back as far as I can reach through the human chain to something bigger, older, & purer - to the seat of the many gifts we are all given to share.

the love that house built

2008-07-11T21:51:00.001-07:00

Already it looks like the place where we would grow up. The living room windows from which we would peek are in place and the interior of that large room is open to the weather. It’s empty of the years of memories – the Christmas trees and posed holiday photographs. Not yet visible are the girls putting their first vinyls on the turn table and disco dancing about the room. The curtains mom would pull back to see who was messing around in “the good room” aren’t hanging there, yet. It doesn’t have the red velveteen wall paper, thick carpet or big couch. It’s just gaping space of a newly constructed house. It’s open to the air like a baby’s mouth, begging to be filled with life.

To the right of the hungry living room are the windows to the “family room” which sits over the garage and overlooks the driveway. So I guess such placement would make that the “family window”. That window would frame the dog’s head as he anxiously watched us leave for the day. From there we’d watch for the bus or waive goodbye to guests just leaving. They, in turn, would flip their lights in acknowledgment just before disappearing down the hill. Or, we’d dash to this spot to see if that little noise we heard was our parents pulling in the driveway and interrupting our miscreant adventures.

Last fall I made two visits during which I cleaned and restored the living room to it’s former, dust free, sense of fancy. I helped mom move the TV out (which involved drilling into the drywall, very exciting) and the dining set in. The family room became a grand dinner room. The dining room became a cozy little nest where mom could watch birds while she ate breakfast, watch tv, or snuggle up on the couch.

But I look at this picture of the house, just new on its foundations and sitting atop as yet still exposed cinder blocks and I realize, it won. All those years of comings and goings, of births, fights, moving upstairs to downstairs, cooking of meals or leaving for weeks at a time on holiday and it was there. The blocks and boards played silent witness, framing our experiences, and still stand like conquerors.

The house, too, has a face. The house, too, has a soul that has aged and tempered under snowstorms, basement floods, and various face lifts. It’s the only faithful member of the family, wrapping its beams around my mother and she hobbles about in there by herself.

The house… the house won the love marathon.

baby photo

2008-07-09T20:24:00.001-07:00

I used to be so jealous of Eleanor. Being the first baby was wasted on her, considering the resentful ingratitude she manifested in later years. I know it’s wrong, but I can’t help but think that, had I been first, we could have stopped there and been perfectly happy. But then perhaps my own recollections of the kind of child I was have become faded into a bucolic shade of rose with time. Perhaps I couldn’t have painted myself as such a good kid without those miscreant older siblings for contrast.

She’s maybe 6 months old, chubby, cute, and sitting naked in a wash basin on the table. Next to the basin lies a little brush that has just been used to put her hair up into a lovely pink satin bow. The table shows evidence of water splashed about, and no one has rushed in with a hurry to wipe up the mess because their attention is so intent on her chubby face. Their every attention rushes in with the fascination of her various wiggles, smiles and passings of gas. With her they posed wearing animated smiles on their faces. With her there was the fascination with this thing they had made. It’s not like it was the last time they ever smiled. Not by a long shot. But this is what they looked like when they didn’t know yet. It’s a beautiful smile at your bathing baby that’s worth being jealous of.

The bride

2008-07-07T20:35:00.001-07:00

Even she believed in fairy tales, I think, although she’s since described them as “her plans”. As in: “They knew back then it was cancer but they didn’t want to interrupt my plans. I would have called it off and stayed by dad if I’d known how sick he was.” Her plans included a white satin hoop dress with a chiffon overlay accented with lace and bows enough to make Cinderella herself want to grab some bits off from pure envy. It’s a shame the photos were just black and white. The color fades into memories and only silver remains.

The plan my grandfather didn’t wish to interrupt was his daughter’s chance to walk down the aisle in a beautiful gown. He knew she wanted to be the woman, the most beautiful woman in every photo, who was the great center of attention. And he, knowing how sick he really was, couldn’t spit out a truth that would have deprived him of seeing such a sight. He must have been so happy and proud. She feels guilty to this day, but for him it was a thing to live for.

There’s a photo of the wedding party. My mom stands in the center like a beacon wearing the loveliest of smiles. My dad, by her side, seems almost incidental to the whole event. I know some of the women in the party from having seen them at various functions through the years. In these images their hair is darker and faces a bit fresher. In some cases they are absent the glasses or extra few dozen pounds that I know as familiar. I had trouble picking out my own aunt from the photo.

The grooms men are ciphers. They stand at attention wearing neutral smiles such that they might have to run off after the photo is done to be pall bearers. There is some sort of light colored vest under the tuxedo jackets which peeks out on each of their right-side-breasts. Why? Were they all right handed? Was that some sort of asymetrical thing of the early 60’s? I know one of them is my uncle. I can pick out the high cheekbones and that strong nose (which I mercifully did not inherit) that typify dad’s family. Which uncle? No idea. Maybe the one mom stopped talking to after he divorced his first wife when she fell onto his concrete barn floor under a hay bale and broke her hip. He stuck her in a nursing home and headed off to marry someone younger who could take care of him.

I have the advantage of some backstory behind this shot. Mom made that gown on her own and the fury of all that sewing caused her to loose weight. When she tried on the dress and it no longer fit. Dad made the mistake of laughing. Finding humor in the futility of others efforts was not one of his more pleasant traits. I know that my aunt dieted down to fit into her bride’s maid dress and look nice for that day; weight she quickly picked up again. Sometimes I’d hear mom wish she could take her wedding dress and “just burn it”. I had no idea what she meant or where that was coming from. It wasn’t the dress that needed burning, it was the star white ideal she’d entered marriage with that deserved a proper funeral.

But there was a new, persistent comfort in her life. Mom would do anything for the church. Each spring our little country Catholic church would make a holy huge deal out of crowning a statue of the St. Mary. The first time mom made a veil for crowning Mary, I was in first grade and had been selected as the little girl who would put the crown onto the little statue of the virgin. Mom dug up lace and netting and took me to craft stores to purchase silk flowers and didn’t she just sew a lovely crown. After a couple of years the priest of our parish purchased some new statuary for our church, among them a lovely new figure of Mary, whose 4.5 foot height dominated the altar over the box where they kept the Eucharist. This became the new Mary to crown and it fell to mom to sew the new veil. We were soon back to the craft store picking out bigger silk flowers. Next she bought a cute little white satin hat like structure for holding something onto one’s head. This was put under a fascinating construction of netting and thick bands of lace that were then filled with the silk red roses. I was littler, then, and had to pose a few times with the crown and veil on my head (but only after a bath) to check if the flowers were colorful and flattering enough without being asymmetrical or too numerous and that the length of the veil was right. It shouldn’t cover Mary’s hands. Too long and it would look like another robe. Too short and it would look twerpy and the most high virgin should absolutely not appear as if she’s also prepared for spring flooding. She should look like the bride of God, not some flower girl. We made special trips down to church to check and soon, in mid-May, the new crown was on the new statue. It was lovely. The next year she swapped off the red roses for some blue silk flowers. I was always amazed at my mom’s ability to just go ten or twenty steps further than was requested to make something that she really thought was precisely right. I wished, even as young as ten, that I had some measure of this perseverance. Then I found the wedding photos. Holy Mary’s crown was mom’s wedding veil.

1963 - the honeymooner

2008-07-06T19:24:00.001-07:00

There’s a black and white photograph of mom from their honeymoon. Or, rather, an image of the woman who would eventually be my mother. While I’m sure she knew that children were to be the fruits of their marital activities, children like us were probably the last thing on her mind. Parents to be inevitably envision offspring of incredible fortitude, intelligence and discipline. Our mewling midnight demands for food and poopy diapers are but the first of decades of disappointment. We fight in the backseat of the car, complain of the heat when we should be enjoying the fair, hide makeup in our purses, drop out of school and get pregnant.

Mom did what she was supposed to do. She’s comfortably dressed in easy fitting capris and a pullover shirt. It’s easy to tell that she’s petite and in good shape, but she’s not sexy. Sexy was just not part of who she was brought up to be. Her Catholic parents raised a proper young woman who entered her marriage as a virgin. On her wedding night she bled and my father was pleased.

There’s very little about the little woman in this photo that I recognize as mom. She never grew fat but her form went through some warping and mishappening with work and childbearing. Her legs were never curvy, but this woman’s shins don’t show any of the thick veins I remember. She’s wearing a neat little watch on her wrist, which was probably the one I used to see in her bureau drawer. The purse in her arm is surprisingly small. I guess the purses didn’t begin to grow until later. The only feature on this woman I recognize and to this day would identify as truly my mother’s are the hands. They’re large, boney, and ready to do work.

They went to Michigan for their honeymoon. Michigan? Isn’t that the state that people try to leave, now? They came back early because of some parade that dad insisted on playing in. But the woman in this photograph, on her honeymoon, is a good girl. It’s 1963. She’s 23 years old – late for getting married back then. The look on her face is that of a purposeful hope that knows only its dreams of the future. She’s confident in her fairytale. She is a stranger compared to the thin, crooked backed, graying woman I know now as mom. Her comportment bears no resemblance to the woman who would warn me “never get married – you’re life is OVER when you get married!” She doesn’t look like she would be proud of me or much approve of what comes out of my mouth. She doesn’t look like someone who’d be my friend at all as I’m sure she’d have been astonished to think a rebellious artist would possibly come from her loins.

Two weeks after this picture is taken the woman in the photo would sit in her mother’s kitchen and confess “this was a mistake.” Too late. The babies were coming.

beats me

2008-07-02T21:07:00.000-07:00

Why do they always portray white people like that? They're in these manicured clothes, women with dresses that measure their waists into a tight hourglass and too much makeup on their faces. Their red lips look like a talking tuna steak. All the men wear glasses framing their expressions like permanent parentheses. And the rooms are a wood paneled extension of the manicured lawns outside. No speck of dust or bright colored throw would find safe haven there. Not in those living rooms, not in the 60's.

Is this what my parents were going for? Is that what that velvet furniture, that huge tropical image papered into the living room, the tiles on the floor and wood paneled walls were over? I see that in those photos so old the reds are starting to fade out. The pictures had my parents with dark hair and my older sisters as babies holding brand new toys. I never lived in that decade, not even as a thought. I arrived later, after the walls had marks and scratches, after the velvet faded. After the purity and new smell wore off. After the toys had turned into bedraggled hunks missing half their stuffing, they were handed off to me. Just as good. After the parents had their hair greyed and the love beaten out of them a bit, well I wasn't any bit the wiser.

But don't scratch your heads, sisters. You left me nothing but to be the beatnick.

to boldly go...

2008-06-26T20:27:00.000-07:00

We're almost to the ground when I look out and see it go by. SUNY Purchase. For years... four years, I lived down there in that landscape of brown brick and looked up as the planes went overhead. I'd hear them land and take off from Westchester airport. We learned to pause during outdoor speeches and lectures. There was no fighting with it. it was just plane noise. I remember sitting out on the mall and watching the jets descending overhead.

And here I am, 16 years later, looking down on that campus from the window of a landing plane. A long way from home and a long way from that tall child who ran off to art school hoping for someone to validate her talents. The mall of brown bricks was lovely on a sunny day and trecherous in the rain. I arrived there as a born again christian, 25 lbs. over weight and wearing ill fitted, conservative clothes. By the end of my first year I was a hippie. By the end of four years I had travelled all over Europe, come back, and was ready to try speaking with my own voice. Teasing that voice out of the layers of programming, assumption and fear would take... well it's an ongoing process.

I have more in common with that girl on the mall than I used to. I'm much younger than I used to be. I've come back to her hair color. I'm running around in suits now, although it all fits much better. I like my mom again. I paint again. Yet there's things she went through that just aren't a part of my life make up anymore. I don't get into religious conundrums and no longer rail at an indecipherable god. I no longer feel guilty about listening to music with a beat. I don't have friends dying of AIDS anymore. I don't sweat the differences. It's just about being further down the road, I guess.

At dinner I sit next to a woman who is Swiss. She asks after my surname and I explain the original german spelling, before a new country and a couple world wars warranted its editing.

"Oh! you know what that means, right?"

No.

K-u-e-h-n. that means "courage".

Back to change

2008-06-20T20:51:00.001-07:00

I’m different.
Now.
For some reason, one month later, after stuffing life in and out of luggage, learning to cram my liquids into clear plastic bags and going through airport security enough times that I know the art of putting shoes, jacket and laptop into bins in just the proper manner so as to be pulled out and back on quickly, I’m changed.

I don’t feel so very different. I feel like someone racing against time, time spent in lines, on planes and across time zones, to do what I said I’d do. You want good user data. I told you I would get you good user data. Fuck, I hope I get good user data. I hope I don’t miss my flight home.

It’s what keeps me constant in this time zone tour that I find amusing. My anchor is my ipod. There’s tracks I listen to for meditating or exercise. Especially there’s the “Hard Candy” playlist I come back to every time I’m heading from hotel to meeting. Each song has the line “no one’s gonna stop me” in there at least once. In five minutes I’ve gotten the pep talk I need. I’m no longer someone nervous about not knowing what she’s doing simply from fear of stepping over the precipice into a new challenge. This is the opportunity to move, act, and inquire that I’ve hoped for and there’s simply no room for hedging or hiding behind some girlish façade. The only thing telling me that I might be doing badly or not knowing what I’m really doing at all is just fear. Fuck the shyness, I can do this. If I turn up the volume that scared voice can’t compete. No one’s gonna stop me, now.

I don’t feel so very different. I feel, well, tired. Tired but determined. What tells me something is different are the looks reflected back to me in other people’s faces. Some of them are funny looks. Some of them I’d say border on flirtation if it weren’t simply too inappropriate for that to be the case. Some of them are congratulatory recognition.

I can’t live there, though, in that reflected face. It’s just not safe. It’s liquid plastic, unable to truly support anything real. The real part I never get to see. It will never show up in the mirror no matter how many times stop to I do my hair and make sure my suit’s fit is impeccable. I can’t see it but I get to see with it if I don’t take my own tunes too seriously.
For now.

renewal pruning

2008-06-08T21:24:00.000-07:00

That vicaria has grown since I adopted this long neglected garden patch. I've made attempts at trimming or controlling her on more that a few occasions. I chop back at the running roots and evict the new growth from places it emerges in attempts to hog all possible water and sun for itself. I noticed that the blooming was pretty weak this year. She's getting lazy. Finally someone tells me how to manage this rambler. Cut it down to 3", pull up running roots and cut a canal around where I'd wish it to end. Today I can only handle the first part and take a thick corner of bushes down to the ground. In the center of the spread, no surprise, is a mass of dead stalks.

Now, I am told, I can prune the re-growth properly and keep it under control. However I can't help but to feel for this plant as I have at the many shoots. A neglected growth that's been allowed to follow her instincts even as they lead astray. And now comes the "renewal pruning" what feels more, I'm sure, like punishment. I've been renewal pruned a couple of times in my life, I know. Cut down to the ground with little more explanation than what hindsight has mustered. I wish I could grab all the drunks I see struggle and show them this plant. I can list the women I'd like to bring to this garden every week to see the progress. I wish I could pull up an audience of all the people I know who have been in pain and wondered why oh why the universe seemed to be taking a crap on them.

Why? Why did HE leave you? Why did you loose the money? Why didn't it work out? Why did things fall apart? Why did you get so sick? Why must you suffer?

Don't cling to those branches of yourself as they are taken away. they were never you to begin with. They were killing you in the middle, really, your life was becoming choked out with the ever expanding volume of yourself. The vicaria will not ask me why I snip her vigorously back to the ground. She will just grow again. And this time, she'll bloom much brighter to celebrate life while it lasts, knowing that me and my knippers are never far away.

the burp of the century

2008-06-04T20:04:00.000-07:00

There are vending machines in the Pentagon. And when the percussive force of the sept. 11 jet plane attack went through the building all of the glass in those machines burst. People came out of their vault like hovels of secret activity to find the halls filled with candy and cokes. Oh, and the smell of burning horse hair.

I had another 9/11 burp. Years ago, high, I had worked on a job for TJX, Marshall's & TJ Maxx parent corporation. We went out to their headquarters, filmed all sorts of people in suits, smiling and waiving. After a few sleepless nights we committed all sorts of antics in the name of their promo video. Put them in a Brady Bunch type grid, even. What was the ad agency that had us do that? the one with the grossly fat project manager. She had to ride up to our office in the sardine can elevator (which could fit 3 comfortably or 4 skinny folk) by herself. I did all the text titles for that piece. All the photoshop files of names lined up neatly in the bottom so as to match up with the video of the smiling face, not block the face yet be inside title safe. There were dozens of names. I was so tired, after weeks without sleep, I accidentally fell asleep and missed a key meeting. I was the kind of tired where after a moment I could fall over, unwakeable, and be none the wiser. Even B~ played guitar in his sleep and hallucinated a conversation with me.

In the days after the September 11 attacks I stood on a subway platform in the heart of Boston reading the roster of people who were on each of the planes sent crashing into new york. Some names I knew out right and for a moment it brought a real horror into my bones. Hands tied, yelled at by strange men, last moments, cell phone calls, honey - I love you - bye bye. Some names I knew I was grateful not to be seeing as they had their plans changed by chance or employers. But others on the list seemed somehow vaguely familiar. I couldn't place them. I couldn't see a face. Were they from a job where I used to work? Had they been people I just talked to over the phone, like at that theater job? I couldn't tell. So many names filter through our fingers, it's easy to misplace the people.

So B~ was in town this weekend and we caught up on 9 years of stuff. And as he described his experience of 9/11, the hallmark of modern day catching up for folks who haven't seen each other in a bit, more pieces fell into place. A bunch of people from TJX were on planes intended for CA and ended... That's how I knew those names, from making all of the titles. I couldn't remember the faces, I wasn't doing the video part. But I knew the white letters that defined who they were.

So there you go.

I wish 9/11/01 would just go away. I wish I never again had to say "my sister worked in WTC, tower 2, and on that day her alarm clock failed to ring so she was running 45 minutes late". 45 minutes. Does that mean she was blessed? That would make other people cursed and just I don't buy that. I wish there was no "where were you on that day" subtext to a discussion of millennial events. I wish the whole mess would stop lending it's foul, poorly spiced after-burps to contemporary life and let us simply digest our grief and confusion in peace.

When we were in New York 2 weeks ago, the day said sister was hooded with her PHD, my brother wanted to go see the site. I haven't been back there since October of 2001.

It's a big hole filled with night sky, now. "Where were they? Were they big?" he asked. I stretched my arm out to the side and high into he sky. "you'd have to look up like this." I craned my neck back. "I tricked M~ into going up onto the roof, once, and it was so quiet up there. Up is the only OUT for a city this big."

In that hole, one month on, were the burning remains of workers, computers, jet planes and paper work. Angry chards of architectural exoskeleton howled in the smoke. In that pile, somewhere, was a pair of pumps she kept in her desk. What happened to those shoes? That's the only question I have left for September 11. I guess the rest is just rhetoric.

9.5 years to rebuild

2008-06-01T20:16:00.000-07:00

He is a person I knew for five years, the middle two and a half of which we were a couple. For three years I worked at the company he co-owned. For the last twelve months I knew him I was still his employee at the company which began popping at the seams from all the drugs and drinking, but I was no longer his mate. Between the January when I told him I didn't want to be with him anymore and the January when I told him I couldn't talk to him anymore was the day in August when he confronted me while I was trying to walk into Clarendon Liquors. It was about 5:30 pm. It was a Tuesday. I dropped the handle of the door after he marched away and wandered around Copley Square.

I remember looking up at the sun as it filtered through the trees. I was about to loose my job because of my behavior at a party thrown by one of our clients. Just a 3 hour boat cruise around Boston Harbor at sunset with 2 open bars on board. I promised I wouldn't get drunk. I walked up the gang plank, stepped onto the boat, walked 3 paces to the bar and ordered a vodka tonic. I promised I wouldn't be high. But, someone rolled a joint in the office before we took a cab over and, well, can't let good 'tween go to waste. It was just a 3 hour party. Is it so difficult to keep a lid on it for 3 hours? well, yeah. And here I stood, accused of ruining a client relationship due to behaviors I don't even remember doing. I didn't do that... I DIDN'T DO THAT!! I said. I knew he must have been making it all up. I didn't know what a black out was, then.

The problem was, obviously, that I said I wouldn't get drunk and I did. Fine. I'll quit. I. Will. Quit.

...

Bull. shit.

"How many times have you made that promise before? Remember last March when you 'stopped'? That lasted 2 weeks. How about last weekend? How long did you last? a day? Remember two days ago when you had a pile of your drug of choice in front of you, knew that putting that shit into your body would not change anything at all, yet couldn't NOT put the shit into your body? Remember that? Stop? Now you think you can just stop? Show me when that tactic has EVER worked."

"Oh. I can't stop. I can't stop drinking."

"NO."

"So that must mean, if I can't stop, that I'm some sort of alcoholic?"

"Right."

"So that must mean I need the... the... that thing.. OH NO!! No way in hell! NO NO NO! I'm not going to any meeting things or doing any step things and I am not, NOT getting brain washed! NO way man!"

By this point I had stopped walking, I was standing there, on the street, just holding onto a tree and looking up at the sun while some... thing... or someone, talked into my ear.

"Remember Lynn? Was she brainwashed? No, she's one of the people who you admire most in the world. Remember Christina? Was she brainwashed? no, she was not. And Bob? He is living out his dream!"

I let go of the tree. I wandered back to the office, which was empty by then, and opened the yellow pages. I called a number I found in there and one hour later, my life was pointing 180° in the opposite direction.

The next day, he found my discarded paraphernalia stuffed into a filing cabinet. He noticed that I was insisting on leaving the office at 5 pm. Within a week he had guessed what was different. I was going to meetings. If ever we fought before, those conflicts were diminished by our new arguments. As the fog lifted I was a tougher person to be around and to push around. Still worse, I began coming in early with a most annoyingly sunny disposition and I would say "hi" to all sorts of strange people when we walked anywhere. I caught a very bad virus that December and while I convalesced at home, my job was terminated.

January 4th a fight ensued which I ended by telling him I couldn't talk to him again. I told him that we had grown to toxic for each other and it was time for our friendship to go dormant.

"Will I ever talk to you again?"

"Yes, In the spring." Both of our lives were absolutely falling apart from the weight of the lies we'd built them upon.

In March, maybe April of this year (9 years later) we bumped into each other on face book. He has a cute kid and looks happy. We said 'hi' via email. Last week I got a note saying he was in Chicago. I suggested coffee.

We chatted over the phone. We went for a walk and had lunch. Perfectly decent and intelligent person to talk to... and I was completely unable to bring forward the sensation that I knew this person. Beyond the tactical details of life and facial features, I did not recognize him. I asked if he was having the same experience and he said "yes". We are like strangers with the scoop on each other's back stories. We probably never, ever, just sat and had an interesting and intelligent conversation like this. He talks on the phone with his wife twice during the day and the love in his voice and respect in his language are just not that of the person I had a relationship with.

At one point, years ago, I started doing astrological charts for folks to earn some side money. I decided to cast a chart for 5:30 pm, August 4, 1998, Boston MA. In the resulting chart several major planets were trining ( at 120°). Trines are moments when something gets easy, when connections are made. It's like putting a wire with very low resistance between elements of an electrical circuit. Charts mostly just look sort of technical and lopsided. But that day, in that place and at that time, with 2 grand trines in the sky, the chart looked like a lovely star. I fancied that this moment of grace was my star rising. As I look into the clear eyes of this man and hear him talk about the past 9 years I realize that, on that day, the star was rising for all who needed it.

the bush

2008-05-31T20:22:00.000-07:00

It's that dang bush again, right there in the middle of my garden. Someone tells me its' name, Valeria. 'It' becomes 'her'. Those shoots, tiny green stems above ground that lead me to thick underground snarls of spreading root systems, are just her nature. She's reaching out, trying to get more life. She's only defending her existence. And I can't deny that natural urge or poo poo the fear behind it. The garden teaches me, again. Here is a thing which doesn't act the way I think that it should. I'd like to "fix" it: hack and carve it back into something more shrub-like that I can understand. I can't hold this bush in my heart if it's looking a little too "natural". But Valeria and I will simply fight each other all summer if I choose to do this.

Help me help you. I will carve you back on this side, by the walk where people pass by. I will trim out your shoots and roots and cover the area with mulch, fancy grass and day lily. As a trade you can expand freely toward the center of the bed, where there is lots of open space. I will not tear you up there. I promise to not yank at a single shoot and you may grow on your north side with reckless abandon.

As I come closer to the walk-side shoots with my sharp, new tool, I see why. I see why she shoots out in all directions. Bent down, underneath the conceit of foliage and flower, I see the source of her fear. In the center of the bush, she's dead. I pull out the husks of former life in hopes that this will allow in more light. Maybe she will breathe a little easier. Maybe she will let up on spreading to heal her center for a month or two.

In my pocket the phone goes off. It's someone I haven't spoken to in over 9.5 years. It was a horrid, angry parting, but here we chat like the friends we started out as. Really, we're neither of us the people that we were. Our cells have swapped over at least once, building us whole new physical bodies. We sort through our flimsy consciousness to tack down what we knew and reference it forward to the present day. What has changed? Where are people? You're doing WHAT??? Some things are the same. He's still stubborn. I still wear the same glasses.

I have to wonder, who is the person he remembers? Does he recognize any vestige of her in me? Because I have only the slimmest recognition of him. It's like a conversation between friendly strangers who each happen to possess an abnormal degree reference to the other's back story.

Enough for one life

2008-05-25T19:53:00.000-07:00

All this writing amounts to is an attempt to fill in the blanks. I don't get to see all of the pieces of the puzzle, I can't fit all realities in my grasp. What I cannot grasp, I simply make up. That effort amounts to this.

What is the real deal with my Mother's life? My brother's inner life? The nature of God? I don't know. I can't possibly. What I don't know, I fill in, page by page and blog by blog. That's my job. That's all of our jobs. Make stuff up and edit accordingly as the universe sees fit to provide new pieces. But new pieces often lead to whole new patterns of blanks that require some fictional tying together.

She's had cancer for the last 6 months - hasn't told us because she wasn't sure, not from the top of her head to the bottom of her souls - that she wanted to live. One more piece fills in much. Ah-ha, perhaps the withdrawl of people we care about stems not from some unknown offense or sudden dislike but out of the secrecy of their own struggles.

I suddenly feel relaxed, in the moment that I realize this. There are things I think I don't have and seem to have been missing. Suddenly I realize, so what? Maybe that task is for the next life? Maybe my only job for this round is to learn to approach relationships without a sense of need...not to fall into a system of trading wish fulfillments but to learn to give first. And let go.

That, it looks like, is going to have to be enough.

oh, brother

2008-05-23T22:16:00.000-07:00

This picture says it all. Taken at the end of the day, as all of us, Me, G~, my sister, her advisor, mom, and my brother, lined up, that camera caught so much more than refracted light.

When I describe the events of this Wednesday, I get collect remarks and eye rollings over my brother's behavior. He went off on a rant in the middle of the commencement ceremonies, spouting off how universities used to have the right idea before they all turned into "liberal think tanks". I tried to make peace. "Even if you are right that doesn't make other people's beliefs wrong, it's in the old testament that there are as many paths to God as human breaths." I meet with immediate rebuke. I hear "Jesus" start coming out of his mouth and just turn to talk with someone on the other side of me about my exciting career in HCI. I'm silently praying that no one overheard him pop his holy lid. I know it all sounds obnoxious, but who are we, really, to judge how he makes sense of the world? Who has divine license to rip the rug of faith out from underneath any of our fellows?

But tonight, I download all of the graduation photos and this last shot of the lot of us lined up simply says it all. M~ and her advisor are ebullient that their 10 years of work together have born proper fruit. My sister is now a doctor of philosophy in transcultural studies (yes, I'm not over bragging). The rest of us are happy, too, although we also look a wee bit eager to head off to dinner. And there, at the end of the line, stands my brother. He's just far enough away from the group as to be standing off on his own. Behind the heads and funny hats I see my sister's hand stretching out to touch his shoulder, straining to include him.

I've only seen him in environments of his own choosing. He is hunting in the woods on his own land or visiting my mother in her home. He goes other places, does other things, but that's not my experience of him. And here he in New York City. I get to see his social tools in action in an environment completely foreign to him. I'm familiar with this world of crowded streets, cross town traffic, suicidal cabbies and cavernous underground subway tunnels. He is not. I already know that some of his social tools are, in fact, weapons. But I never realized how others could just be stunted, malformed and not capable of performing their intended purpose.

On our first cab ride I got to see how people use what they know as a map for comprehending the unfamiliar. Mom spies a name on a building or a truck and assumes it is related to something similar from upstate. Every bit of housing we ride past she asks "is that a housing project?". "Ya, sure" I tell her, thinking that next time I get her to Chicago I'll have to take her past what remains of the Green. Evil me, always trying to shock my mother by dragging her to bad places or introducing her to gay men.

My brother looks at the highway numbers and immediately launches into a detailed explanation of how this must be a highway that runs north south and loops back around. He explains the numbering system and how it signifies east-west-north-south running highways or highways that loop, highways which are branches or tributaries and highways which would have branches coming off of them.

"Nice job, Rain Man!" I joke. But I look at this photo, now, and see that was no joke.

He's bigger, now, and dressed up in a suit. But the person in that photograph who doesn't want to stand too close to the group wears the same expression, carries himself with the same gesture, as the little boy in the photographs of us growing up. I see the same expression as in photos from his first communion or when he had to pose next to his sisters for a group shot in front of one of Dad's cars. Not just the same gesture, same stance, raised chin and clenched fists strikes me. The exact same expression is in his eyes. I see who's really living in there, still; the child.

The day isn't all Jesus arguments. Several times we use Wikipedia my iPhone to settle grammatical or historical disputes. He holds his hand in front of his mouth and leans over to ask me questions he knows seem too simple. He imitates noises that he hears on the street and can determine what mechanism makes them. He forces himself to stay awake through all the many speeches which come straight from the belly of the liberal think tank. When he persistently sings to himself at the dinner table I can tell he must have been under a lot of strain, for him, that day. Sure enough we soon get an outburst. Most painfully, I hear him call himself stupid.

And here I meet my own uncharted territory. "My brother is still little boy" could just be another crazy, poetic theory of mine. Could be another way of mapping some sense out of and plowing some smoothed feelings through the dense forest of memory and anger. Could be there's many more miles to travel in that land. After all, in the photograph, I'm at the opposite end of the group.

A Madonna song? Who knew?

2008-05-18T19:24:00.000-07:00

I hit replay on the lead track from the new album I just downloaded. It opens with a powerful brass line and screams attitude. The instrumentation I'm hearing probably came from a synthesizer, not a real brass section, but I can't help imagining how great it would be to put a horn to my lips and unleash that sound from the other end. I know it's a ridiculous proposition, but "4 minutes" would make great marching band music. It's just nasty. Imagine that sound coming down the street per force of musicians in tight lines and crisp uniforms. Yeah, watch out. Here come the band geeks.

Marching band is where I learned to put up with just about anything. Hot day in a wool uniform and dark colored hat? Drink lots of water. Carrying heavy horn? Part of the deal of being a musician. Belt a song out at the top of your lungs while maintaining alignment? Hell, I've got good pipes. It's not like we're in Africa and starving. I can do this. Besides, not taking a musical instrument is just not an option in my family. In my third of six years in marching band we started holding our french horns differently, so that the bell was up in the air and the sound went straight out toward the spectators and, of course, the judges. I started being positioned on the right end of the row so that mine would be one of the louder sounds they got.

And they did hear it. After the spring competitions our band leader started showing me he adjudicator's sheets of written notes. "Look, see? he said 'nice job french horn'!" I didn't think that meant me. There's lots of things euphemistically called 'horn' in the ass-end of a marching band. I didn't imagine the sound we made was in anyway comprehensible. But we started winning competitions. We got darn good. Where once the adjudicator's audio taped comments were a walk of shame, we started listening to them with, well, less dread. The director would nudge me when there was a compliment about the horn playing. He kept trying to get me to accept compliments, but I was a teenager and this was far too embarrassing.

For some reason I hit replay on this song again, addictive personality maybe, and the visual hits me. I've always remembered marching band through a veil of sweat dripping down into my eyes. But now I get a glimpse of what that horn player must have looked like. She's wearing a uniform meant to play on the style of late nineteenth century military dress uniforms. There's a double row of brass buttons down the front, decoration at the waist and wrists, gold ropes on the shoulders, thick stripes down the sides of the pant legs. But the colors don't suit the period style. The trim on the jacket is purple, as are the hats, and the stripe going down the sides of the pants is a mustard yellow. She looks like soldier out to guard a nation of the color blind. And there's my silver colored horn in the air with the loudest sound blasting out of it. Oh yeah, she's got a tough set of pipes in her chest.

And just then my visual is interrupted by the sensation that something has just stepped on my spleen in a chunky heeled shoe. I'm having a feeling and bust out crying with no clue as to why. Did I loose hold of some vital life line when I sold my horn for gas money to move to Chicago? Was it suddenly remembering that I put up with marching band because Dad demanded that we have a musical education? Was it suddenly remembering who I would have inherited the tough set of lungs from? Was I seeing how I looked to my dad, standing beside the road, and getting a taste of what he felt at that moment? What's bundled up in this rush? Fear? Hope? Pride?

Maybe

2008-05-16T19:41:00.000-07:00

Maybe it was that extra piece of toast I stopped to make for breakfast. Nothing like warm peanut butter and mom's apple butter on rice bread. Maybe it was the fact that I needed to stop in the studio and twiddle a little more on that painting. Who knows the cause. Maybe it was those few extra minutes I clung to the pillow. But that fifteen minutes late going to the gym turned into 30 minutes late going out the door to work. It meant the trains were less crowded, for sure. Definitely more milk of human kindness flows through me and out toward my fellows when they are fewer in number.

Maybe it was the extra 45 minutes of sleep that I got last night, the book I read on the train to work or some happy lyric from a song that drilled its way into my brain. Could have been the weather, too. Ahhh sunshine. But I found myself walking down the street wearing a smile. Confident like I've just rediscovered my crown in a dark closet corner and finally dusted it off. This is the walk of a person who needs nothing, and knows that no one really needs anything. And once she needs nothing, she can stop feeling the pinch of not having it. Whatever it is. I've got all the it I can handle.

Maybe.

the $5 question

2008-05-10T21:23:00.000-07:00

Alone, walking downtown with a free afternoon. Free because you are too busy to see me, again. Work, again. OK, but I don't feel like going home. I'd like to walk in the air and the sun while it's here to be had.

Just then I pass the animal adoption center on Grand. Through the glass I see rows of dogs plying their tricks of the waggling tails and poked noses to earn a loving home. Turn, I double back on my steps and go in.

It smells pretty strongly of kibble, not the most offensive odor possible for a room filled with canines. I enter and am instantly greeted with barks as I pass each cage. On each is a little sheet of info describing the dog. What breed? Age? Color? Has it had its shots? Male or female? Name? Reason for surrender? There are mutts and hounds of every color. And the reasons for surrender get even more imaginative. "Conflict with other pet. Moved to no-pet apartment. Allergies."

It's no leap to see a parallel with data I've filled out on various online dating (excuse me, social networking) sites. Age? Body type? Eye color? Height? Religion? Brief description? We're all just in our little electronic cages waggling our wares for some love.

And reasons for being left go? "She...Refused to have sex with partner who prioritized career over relationship. Refused to have sex with partner after discovering wife. Is not the right person. Not the right time. Is too selfish."

At one cage I find "Hound, tan & black, Male." His sheet is amended with a handwritten "I'm shy, be patient." As I finger the paper said shy hound comes running toward me with the most honest brown eyes I've seen on a male so far this year. He looks up at me and I look down at him and it's instant love. A wet, black nose presses up to the cage by my hands, begging for affection.

"Name: Alf, reason for surrender: unkown"

This is the romance. He sees me, I see him, and we see only happiness could possibly follow. Alf! We're perfect for each other! I don't just want the dog. I want the lifestyle that goes along with having a happy dog. I'm in a fairy tale where we go for long walks on the beach every morning and play in the park every night no matter what the weather. He cuddles by my feet while I work and smiles happily every time I've entered a room. A happy vista spreads out in my imagination. This rosy scene makes no account for what happens to Alf when I go to work or visit my mom for long periods of time. Our romance is all leap and no look. We're both still in our cages, on good behavior, and haven't faced the day of reconning over soiled rugs or disappointed hearts.

Why doesn't this sweet dog have a home yet?

"May I ask, why haven't you found a man yet?"
"So, where's the hubby?"
"So, why is a woman like you still single?"
"So, where's your date? You're here all ALONE??"

I am sick of the escalating barrage of these questions. The answer must be spun gold that everyone must have! So, next time I get asked I will charge my interrogator $5 to find out! I plan on growing rich!

The answers?

"I haven't been the right partner for someone, yet."
"I got hungry on the plane and ate him."
"Well, like Katherine Hepburn said: 'I could have the admiration of many men or the criticism of one. Which would you choose?'."
"I'm not alone, I'm talking to you."

I have to keep reminding myself that I've never done this before. I've never done this day before. I'm winging it and being patient. I'm reminding myself that there's no hurry. I'm trying to let go and make room for your priorities (and not letting go of mine, either). Everyday I make myself dump the baggage of how that guy back then wasn't right or how I didn't bring my best person to the table and remind myself that I've just plain never done this before.

Me and Alf, well, our hearts are perfect for each other. But his big hound body and my smallish flat are not a great mix. My schedule and his desire to run around could be a toxic combo. I'm not the right human for him, and so I pat his wet nose, wish him the best and walk on. We'll do ok, puppy, and both find that home where we grow past those moments when we disappoint our significant humans to be loving companions.

Singing Seed

2008-05-09T14:37:00.001-07:00

I round the corner to my desk this morning and see a small boy staring up at me. Yet another co-worker has brought their small child to work. I wonder only briefly as to what circumstances repeatedly turn our cubicle farm into romper room. All day I can hear the little boy playing with his toys in his mother's work space. Toy trucks clatter along walls while he amends with noise of engines and crashes. What did little boys ever play with before the invention of the car? Oh wait, play is a modern privilege of children.

For most of the day I notice a particular sound rising above the din. The little boy is singing. There was a little girl here a few weeks ago who also couldn't resist the urge to sing. Oh yeah, children sing.

At some point when we were little Dad's tape player was discovered. Our first experiments at sound design began. I remember hearing my own voice for the first time and being amazed at how strange and tinnish it sounded. We'd record and record over recordings until the tape was a layered montage of burps, farts, giggles, goofy noises with an under-tone of singing. I was singing out some nonsense, not even a melody as much as a sustained noise making, and my brother taped it. So there you go. Proof that I, too, was a child that sang.

Next comes the obvious question, when did I stop singing? Probably everyone in this office was a child that sang. So why, as we all proceed through our day, do we not hear discussions carried on in some sustained, melodic speech rather than our regular adult staccato? Who told us to stop singing? When did we out - grow the giggle?

Did some sour faced older sibling tease me out of my singing? Was it having attention called to my behavior on the school bus which announced the unacceptability of this habit? Was it all the times that mom yelled at me to "act right" and "be a young lady"? I seemed to be in constant admonishment to calm down, sit still, act right, ... and my favorite "act like yourself". By my lights I was being myself and my self was not very calm, still or, apparently, right.

Maybe that's what's pushed me in recent years to get back into choir. Practicing is the perfect excuse for singing in the shower or humming as I go down the street. I suppose it's never too late to get your song back.