Reflection

I've tried to remember this particular Bruce Springsteen song that I heard about thirty years ago when I lived at the top of the stairs of a little brown shingled house in Chapel Hill. I've tried to remember it because of the way it made me feel that day when one of my room-mates or maybe even I put it on the stereo in our room and cranked up the volume. I think it started in that mournful way Bruce starts many of his songs and then picked up in that joyful way. I wasn't a big Bruce fan in college -- preferred rhythm and blues, Van Morrison and Bob Dylan. But that feeling when I heard that song, those lyrics, Bruce's voice -- that's really what I guess I'm trying to remember. How music slithers into the ear, the brain and breaks out of the body. Back in those days we couldn't look things up, so for years afterward when I thought about that song, god, what was it? I guess I was seeking the feeling I had when I heard it. I thought about the song and the feeling this morning in the dark as I lay in bed and listened to the rain falling finally, its thin patter on the metal awning over the back door. The word conjure. The word soothe. The memory of a smaller, smoother body now grown rounder and soft. Longing.

My Conversion

I know some of you will be happy to hear that I saw the light last night. Note the labels that I used for this post: Bruce Springsteen, music and religion. Yes, indeedy. I worshipped for over 3 1/2 hours at the altar of Bruce Springsteen. I danced and sang at the top of my lungs, on my feet for nearly the entire time. It was joy in the form of thousands of people waving their snaky arms overhead, grown men hugging one another and little kids bewildered to see their parents acting so crazy. It was one more and then another and then another and then another, and we were all laughing and bouncing and jumping and doing one more. And then again. I only drank one beer, but I was in love with the universe. That's my whoop at the end of the clip when I was born again.

Take a Shower and Let Me Share Two Things

Whew. That was intense, no?

Last night, Oliver and I drove up the 101 in my new car to watch Henry play lacrosse. Did I mention that I have a new car? I traded in my Sexy White Mazda for a smaller, sportier Smokin' Hot Blue Mazda. It has a particularly good sound system that Oliver quite ably hooked our iPhones up to, and while we whiled (can I say that) in the tremendous traffic of the shitty, I demanded some Rolling Stones. Specifically Sweet Virginia, perhaps one of my favorite Stones hits. Did I mention that I love to sing anywhere on this little old blog? If not, I love to sing, and I really, really love to sing Sweet Virginia, right after that incredible plaintive harmonica turns into drums and then -- oh, Mick. Little did I know last night the storm that would be unleashed by Tina the Pharma Rep in the morning, but I think it might have been prescient that I belted out the lines with the profanity with especial vigor. I'm not talking about tryin' to stop the waves behind your eyeballs, either. After all, Oliver is nearly fifteen and needs to know that it's quite all right to scrape that shit right off your shoes.






Anywho.


Henry won the game and even scored a goal (he plays long stick defense and rarely gets the chance)! I acted like a woman possessed and even stomped my feet on the metal bleachers and screamed his name! I am so proud of him and the man he's becoming. Honestly, how lucky am I?

Here are the two things I wanted to share:

1. My second interview is up on marijuana.com. It's with my dear friend and cohort, Allison Ray Benavides. If I weren't differently inclined, I'd be the Alice to her Gertrude. Please check out the interview and leave a comment. Poke around and read some other  articles -- all written by a terrific bunch of people. Give that site some traffic so I can continue to earn my keep.
2. I am going to see Bruce Springsteen tonight. Yeah. How about that?

Raging Against the Machine in Little Tokyo with Howard Zinn's American Voices

The evening began in Little Tokyo, downtown, where Oliver and I went and slurped noodles. He had some sort of beef bowl, and I had seared tuna with a spicy wasabi dressing. Afterward, we walked over to the Aratani Theater, a small but classy joint where I've seen Toni Morrison and other literati. Some of you might remember that as part of our homeschool curriculum, Oliver and I are making our way through the young people's version of the great radical Howard Zinn's controversial People's History.  In a nutshell, Zinn writes American history from the point of view of the exploited as opposed to the "great" leaders, statesmen and warriors. The book has been suppressed over the years, bemoaned by the religious and patriotic right, but Oliver and I are finding it compelling reading, as well as overwhelming and sobering. Tonight's show had actors reading original texts of some of these people in American history -- familiar names like Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X and Naomi Klein, and then ones less so like poet Marge Piercy, union activists and labor leaders.

An 1880 speech by the women's suffragette and populist Mary Elizabeth Lease who cried out against the excesses of Wall Street was weirdly prescient and brought down the house. The folk musician Joe Henry sang a Bob Dylan tune, and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine sang Springsteen's Ghost of Tom Joad. Can I just tell you that while I recognized the name Rage Against the Machine, I didn't know Tom Morello from Mr. Morell, my eighth grade English teacher? Ya'll, I'm a believer after hearing this guy's voice and guitar-playing and just overall -- well -- passion. I might have even jumped up and down at the end during a rousing rendition of This Land is My Land when he told us to do so.

Oliver, who earlier expressed his reluctance to sit through all of these performances was completely jacked up when John Kresinski of The Office walked onstage, and don't tell him I told you, but I think he was smitten by Kerry Washington. Aside from feeling energized by the wisdom and spirit of these voices of our distant and near past, I left, too, feeling sober and not a little depressed at how little has changed, how we seem to be moving backward, again, in this country, involved in endless wars, rallying to deport and demonize the immigrants who do the bulk of work, taking away women's reproductive freedom, shooting men of color or throwing them in jail and allowing those who brought the country to its economic knees to walk free, their pockets newly padded, buying elections and driving an ever greater wedge between those who have and those who have not. For a few glorious hours tonight, though, I looked around and saw people of every age, shape and color, and the sight of my boy's smiling face and shining eyes made me feel a tiny bit hopeful.

Pour me a drink, Theresa

in one of those glasses you dust off. 
And I'll watch the bones in your back
like the stations of the Cross.

This song. I can drive in bumper to bumper traffic up the 101, be deliriously happy even, with this song blaring.

Lordy Lordy.

CBD/Medical Marijuana Update

It's about day five, I think, since I started squirting a dropper full of yellow tincture sort of under Sophie's tongue. I haven't seen much effect, yet, and while I at first attributed that to it's too early to see, I'm wondering now whether I have the right stuff, the right dosage, the right proportion, the right everything.

That's the thing with trying new things when you've been trying new things to no avail for nearly two decades.

You read about children getting half their brains removed and they're back to normal! Have you ever considered surgery for Sophie? people ask, and while I know the intent is good (they saw the special! It was a miracle!), I have to bite my tongue, hard, to not scream, We're talking about cutting someone's brain open and taking out half of it, people! My daughter's brain! I say, Unfortunately -- or perhaps, fortunately, Sophie is not a candidate for brain surgery.

I saw a special on a high fat diet the other day, people will say, have you ever considered that for Sophie? (Yes, twice -- once during frontier times, 1995, when Sophie was not even six months old, and then again, when Sophie was about five years old and the experience was so traumatizing that I still sweat when I think about it. I have a chapter in my book titled Two Tigers in a Cage devoted to it, if you'd like more information).

So, back to the CBD/Medical Marijuana. I joined a Facebook group called Pediatric Cannabis Group, an incredibly motivated bunch of parents of children with horrific seizure disorders who converse for what seems like all day in earnest tones about CBD, THC, Charlotte's Web, Cannatonic, Colorado, California, lobbying in New Jersey. There are government conspiracy theorists and housewives and I'm trying to keep up with the threads, and I just can't. I hate threads. I hate conversing about this shit. I hate figuring it out.

Last night, I went to see the new documentary about Bruce Springsteen, and when I woke up this morning, the thread of Thunder Road was making its way to the surface and I want to just follow that thread, the one that Bruce is singing, you can hide 'neath your covers and study your pain, make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain, waste your summer praying in vain for a savior to rise from these streets --

Turn it up.