Two Stories

 

I

Tonight I made a beef stew. I poured a bit of oil into a heavy pot and waited for it to get hot. While I waited I put a bit of flour in a large bowl with some salt and pepper and then threw the beef cubes in and tossed them until they were well coated. When the oil was hot, I added the beef in two batches, watching the edges curl and the flour darken and the spatters of oil and fat fly out and land. I turned my back on the beef and chopped an onion into medium dice and then I minced four cloves of garlic. I pulled a tube of tomato paste out of the refrigerator and rolled it up like toothpaste until it squirted out the top. The beef was browned in two batches, removed and sitting on a plate, the oil in the pot the burnt bits of beef then more oil and the onions and the garlic and the tomato paste stirred all together until fragrant. 

Read the rest here.

Eye Can See All Obstacles In My Way

 

The good news is that I was in the hands of a very capable retinal specialist who was able to repair a tear in my retina yesterday morning. I don't have any restrictions in movement except for bending down or lifting weight over 20 pounds or exercising for a few weeks (the last being, as those who know me, music to my ears). I have a very gnarly left eye and feel vulnerable and disoriented. I feel as if I were on the other side of a ViewMaster, the tiny figure that is being looked at, clicked on, passed by. It’s also as if I were looking out at the world from inside an aquarium, the surface line of water sloshing across my eye, dark on the bottom, light at the top, shadows.

Read the rest on my Substack, if you'd like. 

Conversations in Quarantine

I can't do it anymore.
What's happening?
I can't do it anymore.
Where are you?
I'm driving.
Where?
I don't know. Anywhere.
You should pull over.
I can't do it anymore.
It's too much.
Yeah.
It's too much for all of us.
Yeah, it's always been too much.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The yeah yeah yeahs.





How's Sophie, he texts.
Fine
Then,
nothing.





A nasty toxic red tide we see during the day on the beach in southern California turns into a glowing blue -- what? Phosphorescence. Some people call it magical. I'm transfixed less by the blue emanating from dolphins and water in moonlight than the transformation itself. The smell of decay masked by light. It doesn't seem possible so I guess, magic.






How's Sophie, he texts.
She's running a fever. No other symptoms. I will talk to the doctor tomorrow.
Then,
nothing.






People on cell phones bore me. The people I can't see and the people I can see. The head low like a horse without the velvet nose. I'd like to see some teeth, the huge yellow ones biting an apple.




Anger.




Red tide. Decay. Stink.

Phosphorescence is light emitted after exposure to radiation.
It's produced by something that doesn't flame or heat.

(BTW, Sophie had a fever last week for three days with no other symptoms. She also stopped having seizures which is always the case for her. I wondered if she had The Virus. I wondered whether she'd die, but I wonder (this) (whether she'll die) every single day. The parenthetical. My powers of dissociation are strong. I had my first tele-health meeting with The New Physician. She took up 1/2 of the rectangle that is my phone screen. She wore a white lab coat and stood in front of an examining table with a blood pressure machine on the wall behind her. I wondered if it were a backdrop, one of those screens you can put up behind you while you Zoom. My students do that. One of them has the Tiger King guy behind him, the stripes playing light across his face. Wavy. We're reading The Crucible. The student can't believe I refuse to watch Tiger King. Why not? he asks.  Why? I say. What's a crucible? he asks. A container that holds high temperatures, metals melting. The doctor says, I wouldn't test her because it's so uncomfortable. I imagine driving in a line of cars into Dodger Stadium with Sophie in the back of the car in her wheelchair. Would someone open the door and have to swab her? I read somewhere the nasal swab felt like it touched my brain. 
)




How's Sophie, he texts.
Fine.                                                                  (I am, too.)
Then,
nothing.



I'm outside today picking mint from the garden. I rip it up take a huge bunch inside and wash it in the sink. The apple tree has blossoms and every succulent has a bloom. The sky is blue and a velvet hummingbird sideswipes my nose, I hear it coming. Hear it here.

Job Counseling Pandemic-Style

Apple pie for dinner. Week four of quarantining. How's it going, Reader?

I taught my last class this morning and am "off" this week for Spring Break. I had some sautéed Swiss chard with garlic and olive oil for an extra-early dinner, along with a slice of bread that I baked yesterday, slathered in butter. I've honestly found my baking groove, something that's been a part of me since I was a little girl. Which reminds me -- I had an "interview" with a job evaluator/counselor the other day, all as part of the post-post divorce shit-show. It took 4 1/2 hours for a professional to interview me, pandemic-style via the internets. He ate a sandwich during the interview, and I stepped out of camera range to take care of Sophie when she needed something. The purpose of this "counseling?" I believe it was to evaluate my earning capacity and to make recommendations on how to better utilize my time. I am, naturellement, eager to get the results as I just know I should be doing more, making more money and better utilizing my time than teaching 20 hours a week and caregiving for 70.  I answered questions regarding my family's work history (where my parents worked, where my sisters worked) and then regarding my own work, from my very first job. Honestly, it was kind of fun to go through my work history -- a kind of trip down memory lane with a guy from Monty Python, except instead of looking at him behind a desk, I looked at him through a screen, right into his living room where he had a sandwich just off-screen and took bites, albeit apologetically, throughout.

I don't know what to tell you about this experience, other than what I took away. That is: if you're a caregiver of a severely disabled young adult, most people in the professional world are not going to know or care about the kind of work you've done, even if you've done that work for 25 years. They might ask you things like, If you were working, could you work 40 hours a week? or What would you need to work 40 hours per week? and you would answer, I already work 90 hours a week! and you'd say that three times when asked the question three times, and when the man sighs and re-words (let me put this more simply, he offered) the question in a way that would be easier for your tiny little mother mind™ to comprehend, you still stammer out that you work 24/7, basically, even as you realize from the very deep depths of your tiny little mother mind™ that it doesn't matter, it really doesn't matter because the very fact that you're being put through this means the real world doesn't understand and probably never will.



"I myself have worked all my life in such a building, and have never once.....

                                                                                                          AHHHH!"

What I've Been Doing

Photo by the inimitable Carl Jackson,

I bet you're wondering what I've been doing since I last posted when the year was young -- only two days -- and so filled with promise and resolution and new beginnings. Well, we're eighteen days in, Reader, and so far my favorite thing about the new year is writing 2020 instead of 2019. It looks better, it sounds better, and I'm hoping it gets better.

So, what have I been doing?

1. Reading: I've read Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney which I really liked (she's just such a readable writer), but I didn't like it nearly as much as last year's Normal People. I'm still reading The Water Dancer by Ta Nehisi Coates and finding it difficult. Dare I say he's a better non-fiction writer (beyond brilliant) than fiction writer? As the kids say, IMHO. I'm almost finished with the sensational The Yellow House: A Memoir by Sarah Broome. It's so good. In the bathroom I've got this great book called Sharp by Michelle Dean.  The subtitle is "Ten Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion," and so far I've gotten through the first profile on Dorothy Parker. I'm not one of those people who spends a lot of time in the bathroom on the toilette or doing my toilette, but I do like to pick up something interesting and short to read that I can come back to and easily pick up where I left off. I've also just begun to read Garth Greenwell's Cleanness because two of my writing mentors recommended it, and the editor of MGDB* touted it as well. I read Greenwell's earlier book, so I'm expecting this to be as good. The sex is very, very graphic. By the way.
2. Going to movies: I've seen "1917," which sucked me in and under as I've always been partial to the Great War, if one can be partial toward wars at all. Aside from sitting on the edge of my seat throughout the movie and being enthralled by the cinematography and the two beautiful co-stars, the main feeling I had was a sort of bemused rage and incredulous sorrow. WE MUST DO ANYTHING WE CAN TO MAKE SURE THERE ARE NO MORE WARS. Honestly, nearly every war movie I've ever watched has manipulated me into this emphatic imperative. Wars are hideous. There is no glory or honor in them. They are madness and insane, and anyone who justifies killing on a grand scale like that is spouting propaganda. Speaking of wars, I've also seen my beloved Terence Malick's "The Hidden Life" which is another war movie, but it's about goodness -- about what it means to be deeply moral and good. I saw Goddess Greta Gerwig's "Little Women" and was utterly enchanted by it, transported in exactly the same way I was transported by the book -- any book, actually -- as a very young girl. That took me by surprise as I had never seen any of the other renditions and only had the book to compare it to. The movie was just as much about writing and reading as it was about being a sister and a woman chafing at societal constraints. I absolutely loved it. I've watched some Netflix and Amazon stuff, too -- most memorably, "The Two Popes" which was more a story of two human beings than the weird fuckery of the Catholic Church. I think that's because Anthony Hopkins and especially Jonathan Pryce were exceptional. Reader, I still can't abide the Catholic Church and that dislike would include Francis, as he is still THE POPE of an institution that I believe should be dismantled.
3. Teaching at two different schools: I have around 60 students that range in age from 13 to 18. The majority are in a small, private, ultra-religious high school here in Los Angeles that is, at the very least, giving me a lot of material for a future memoir. No more need be said or will be said. Stay tuned, though. I have a few students in another, very highly specialized school, each of whom I adore. Truly. One of my students began reading Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and on a day when I wasn't even teaching her, she poked her head in my office and said, Oh my god! I love the book you picked out for me! I was having a particularly difficult time finding something for another of my students to read and relate to -- and then I thought of Flannery O'Connor's short stories. The kid is sucked in and under and very, very into "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "The Life You Save May Be Your Own." Reader, this thrills me to no end. 
4. Having my mind blown without the use of psychotropics: I attended a 12-hour Holotropic Breathwork workshop last Saturday. I haven't fully processed the experience and don't have the words to describe the journey I went on during the 3 hours of breathing I did, blindfolded and  carried by incredible music that filled the room and my body with sound. You can read about holotropic breathwork on the world wide webs. I released a whole lot of shit and am still feeling the effects in a positive way over a week later.
5. The tedious work of what Divorce Lawyer World calls "Discovery." I will say no more except that I have been set into a Matrix, a strange and mad world of no reason, where everything is transactional and my worth measures in negative numbers. It's a good thing that one of the hallucinations I experienced during the Holotropic Breathwork session was my generous body as Mother Earth, merged with the indigo Cosmos and lit by stars, my children rushing toward me as beings of power, my pelvis on fire and the only thing to fear a strange, searing pain that ran up and down my left side but, allowed to speak for itself, was released and transformed into dance. Honestly.

* My God-damn book, which I have worked on only in my brain with not a thing on paper to show for it for over a year.

 

2020

This is my New Year's post.

On New Year's Day, Carl (aka The Bird Photographer) and I took Sophie to Solstice Canyon in Malibu because we read that it had an accessible path. It did have an accessible path, and the two of us took turns pushing Sophie up the steep grades, stopping every now and then to admire the yellow leaves, the bird calls and the grass-covered hills in the distance. I would have liked a view, but you had to do some serious, non-accessible climbing to see the Pacific, so Carl and I planned to come back another day. Afterward, we stopped at a fish shack restaurant on the PCH (that's Pacific Coast Highway for you non-Californians) and ate fried shrimp, grilled swordfish, grilled catfish, french fries, Cajun rice, coleslaw and salad. The restaurant was more "accessible" than accessible, so when we left, Carl had to make a path through the hordes of people waiting in line. He was helped by one guy who yelled out, "Watch your backs, folks! Coming through!" It must be the New Year kind of thing and all people filled with the resolutionary spirit because all the people parted, smiled, said encouraging things like No problem! How ya doing! Happy New Year! as we made our way through.

Here's the thing. It's been a hard year. It's been a hard decade. Hell, it's been a hard couple of decades.

But then there's now.

Who would have thought that on the first day of the year 2020 I would be divorced, walking a path with my daughter and a man with whom I've fallen deeply in love? Sophie's father -- my ex -- is devoted to Sophie, as she is to him, and I am grateful for that. I will say bluntly, though, that I had absolutely no expectation of finding happiness with anyone else. I had the usual post-fifty fears, both superficial and complex, but, frankly, the real concern was over who in their right mind would take up with someone whose life is a three-ring circus? There is baggage and then there's -- well -- baggage. I'm not saying Sophie is baggage, but the world of disability is not for the faint of heart. Sophie's made me who I am. Carl has a massive heart, and I am filled to bursting with gratitude.

Runes and Ruin

Sunset, Pacific Ocean
December 2019

Vikings had only an oral culture. Eventually they used runes, which were a sort of alphabet.
Here are some common ones that I lifted off the World Wide Web:

 Name:Hagalaz, “hail.” Phoneme: H. Meaning: destruction, chaos.

 Name: Naudhiz, “need.” Phoneme: N. Meaning: need, unfulfilled desire.

 Name: Uruz, “aurochs.” Phoneme: U (long and/or short). Meaning: strength of will.

 Name: Thurisaz, “Giant.” Phoneme: Th (both soft and hard). Meaning: danger, suffering.

 Name: Ansuz, “an Aesir god.” Phoneme: A (long and/or short). Meaning: prosperity, vitality.

All the free men in Viking World would gather together to make laws and settle disputes without resorting to blood and violence. They called this meeting The Thing. Ever since I read Sigrid Undset's books in my early twenties, I've been fascinated by that name. The Thing.

I'm going to call what's happening between my ex and me The Thing from now on. So when I disappear from this space you'll know it's The Thing, and that there's been no blood and violence.

Anyway.

I went out on the wine dark sea yesterday with Carl. We saw one gray whale, about fifty dolphins and some sea birds. It was really cold and really beautiful. The sunset was incredible. The photo I put up there is blurry, but there's no filter on it, and don't you think that oil tanker could be a Viking ship? You see where I'm going, right?

I didn't walk around the boat much because earlier I had wrenched my foot while cleaning up my porch. I was wearing clogs and stepped on an uneven spot and stepped off the clog. The clog, rather, bruised the side of my foot. I have a bum knee as well on my left leg, so now I have a bum knee and a bum foot, and I'm walking weird. I feel heavy but not rooted. On the boat, though, I sat and swayed and rode the waves like a whale myself.


Reader, what are you doing?

Dogged and Dogged

found on the internets

The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head.

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

I am in a dream these days, some part a deep and abiding sense of being loved and another a nightmare. I walked down the dingy halls of the courthouse earlier this week, dread and bewilderment masked by cheer and a dull gratitude for beloveds flanking me. What does it mean to be unreasonable? The word contempt. Marriage. Divorce. Years. Papers filed by lawyers and a whole system constructed by. By. The halls of justice are really halls. The metaphors of justice do justice.  There must be a system. I stare at the back of a head whose folds I know. Metta. The Virgin Mary. Those old tricks. I age ten years. I dig for humor some days later, dogged and dogged and find it in the 55+ menu at IHOP where I am not questioned and order a full plate breakfast of eggs, sausage, toast and hash browns. The coffee was good.

When You Can't Stop Crying

I've been hearing all kinds of wise talk these days as I seek the counsel of people who love me. Yesterday, after twisting needles into parts of me that were clearly storing an inordinate amount of anguish, Dr. Jin spoke about Chinese armies who fight one another.  The side that doesn't want to fight or who is fighting out of integrity and truth against evil wins, she said in so many heavily accented words. Regardless of outcome. This felt strangely reassuring.

Today I was told by one of Sophie's caregivers that when you can't stop crying, you haven't cried enough.

Pictures, You Need Pictures: Part 2: Rome

I'm sorry, ya'll. I'm sorry that I haven't kept up here. I haven't kept up really anywhere, and that's because I'm involved in a very ugly, very upsetting and very stressful post post divorce thing. That's all I can say about it, and I would appreciate all your good thoughts and wishes and metta for all those involved. I am bewildered and upset and disbelieving and depleted and very, very sad.

Onward to Rome.

Henry and I had an amazing time in Rome and Florence. We stayed in a friend's apartment near the Vatican. The building was about five stories and had one of those incredible cage elevators and the winding marble floored staircases.

Please take my picture in this elevator, I asked Henry.

Every room in the apartment looked out on the great dome of St. Peter's. I'm not kidding. As the kids say, "Ridic."

Those are my legs, profoundly weary from tromping about 20,000 steps a day in boots and sneakers that somehow didn't cushion the 56 year old caregiver body like they did 35 years ago.

Everything is so damn beautiful and big and ancient and filled with centuries of longing and strife and reaching toward beauty and the divine. And suffering.

Our own struggles aren't lessened by witnessing ruins of the past, but they are integrated into something much larger than ourselves.

Henry and I made some remarks in poor taste about St. Peter's Square and the Vatican. Mea Culpa.

We walked about a million miles a day, and I was usually trailing Henry, as evidenced by the photo below.

I bought a pink ring, and it perfectly matched the pillows on the purple sofa at our friend's apartment.

We ate pizza, pasta and gelato every day.

Shortly after the above photo, after we'd thrown our coins in the Trevi Fountain, we both had nervous breakdowns because of the crowds. Honestly, Reader, Rome is insanely crowded.

If you look closely, you get an idea of the hordes of people streaming down that central street toward the Spanish Steps. We are standing at the top of them, here, marveling at the view.

We got the heck out of Dodge, bypassing the crowds and roaming past the above door.

The skies were Felliniesque, big white clouds and blue.

Sigh.

I was there two weeks ago.

There WILL be a Part 3, I promise.

What's Elusive

"The Unicorn"
Los Angeles Metro Bus

Here's the good thing. My old friend Bill Martin has this new show out -- a comedy on Thursday nights called "The Unicorn." I went to UNC with Bill, and he is still the sweet, incredibly funny man I knew more than thirty years ago. Ya'll should watch his show because it's also sweet and very, very funny and we all need funny, right?

Here's the bad thing. I need a lot of funny these days. I am not going to mince words. There's a lot of shit going down in these parts -- most of it unbloggable. I guess I am going to mince words. There's a tremendous amount of hate and rage roiling around me personally. I need all your positive juju and miracle-making, please. The other night I got into my car at 10:30 at night and drove all the way to Venice Beach in my robe and nightgown. I screamed in the car and then listened to Van Morrison sing "And It Stoned Me." I listened to Bob Marley sing "No Woman No Cry." Sophie's fine. The Brothers are good. I am not fine or good. I am digging deep to find my way back to the calm and peace that I know is somewhere within, still.

I love this poem:

Before Winter by Kwame Davis

Our Lady of Ripening on the Vine

to Carrie and Wil

There are no accidents.

Yesterday was a difficult one, and I spent much of the afternoon in tears. By dinner-time, my responsibilities as a mother seemed as burdensome as a factory job, and while cutting a lemon for dinner, the lemon not dinner, I knicked the nail on my middle finger of my left hand. It was the first time I'd used the knife, a new one from Japan, it said. Exceedingly sharp. Precise. A bead of blood rose instantly to the surface and then a line that ran down the crease and into the cuticle. It hurt. A heart throbbing in a nail bed. Oliver was circling around having picked all the Meyers from the little tree in our garden bed. A bounty of lemons hanging heavy and ripe, limoni, a Montale poem. Please don't pick all of them, I had told him. They'll keep on the vine but not if you harvest them. He didn't listen to me as his wont, and because he's fourteen and his wont also includes over-reaction, because he is newly part of a broken family, I held my tongue at least to something duller. I set my mouth hard when I saw the giant bowl of lemons on the counter. Why did you pick them all? I said as I chopped, while I chopped before I cut. He wiped each one clean at the sink as I held my finger under water, pushing the blood out. We were both silent. I'm not sure when the tension eased, but at some point he showed me one particular lemon with a tiny "4" etched into the skin. Look! Mom! he said. Isn't this weird? It was weird, and it was cool. I agreed, my mouth softened. You have to eat this one whole, he said when I told him that 4 has always been my lucky number (since the 4th grade, when I had Mrs. Delp, my favorite teacher, four letters, the number itself, four letters, room 4 in school), Oliver put it beside my bed.

This morning I woke up, heavy in my bed. My finger throbbed. A heart in a finger. The bed of a finger. Some months ago, my friend Carrie wrote about Alana Fairchild's Mother Mary's Oracle cards and guidebook. I'm a sucker for oracles -- whether it's bibliomancy, the I Ching, a book of poetry, Mary the Mother of God. I bought a set. This morning, I shuffled the deck, cut it and turned over the top card. 

#4. Our Lady of Ripening on the Vine

I ask you to surrender your future-thinking to me. Although your future contains the promise of great blessings, do not let this distract you from the blessing I bestow upon you in this moment. I ask you to open your arms to my blessings in the here and now. You are the sweet fruit, heavy on the vine. The time for harvest has come. This is your time.

...This oracle comes to you as a confirmation -- there is something within you, something of you, that is ready. Even if the immediate reality doesn't match a fantasy that you have once held about how life would be when you would finally share more of yourself with the world, you are still ready and this is your time to shine.

...This oracle brings you a particular message that you are more ready than you think you are -- for whatever adventure most concerns your heart, or is already right at your feet. Do not shy away. It is your time for harvest. Open your arms and gather abundance to you. Trust that your abundance will benefit others too, because the more you have, the more you can choose to share and give. Do not be afraid to receive blessings and to have what your heart desires. The manifesting desires of your heart are the heavenly fruit becoming heavy on the vine and ripening, ready to be enjoyed. Fruit that is not gathered and eaten will rot, feeding the earth to be born again. So nothing is wasted. Yet that fruit could be sweetly savoured by those capable of receiving. There is so much waiting for you in this moment. Gather your harvest, accept the goodness and let gratitude fill your heart.

Damn if I'm not eating that lemon whole today, letting the sour and the sweet run down my face, clean my wounds. We've got bags of lemons to share as well.

Making the Vague Bearable

I got up on that little stage and expressed my motherhood and then sat down and listened while other women expressed theirs, and then I and a few of my friends who had come went out for a drink and chatter and laughter. I had an elderflower gimlet and a few calamari and some french fries and lots of laughs. It was a good night.

I had some really good news today about a job -- a really good job that will help to -- well, not help, but rather -- sustain me. Negotiating is still in the works, so I'm not going to say much more, but it's a flexible job that will enable me to be here for my kids and particularly Sophie. I am beyond grateful, sort of hushed by the whole possibility. I guess I'll slip in here that I'm going through a big transition right now, a divorce, to be blunt. Is a blog really the place to say this? Perhaps not. Despite what you think you know of me, you must know that it's not all, and there are certain things about my life that I'm just not going to write about -- ever.

I will include a poem, though, because poetry makes the vague bearable.




Failing and Flying

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Jack Gilbert, from Refusing Heaven