Announcement!

 

No, I'm not getting married or pregnant or publishing my book. I got nothing as far as life-shattering events to share with you. I AM permanently moving, though, and will no longer be posting on the Blogspot platform. This blog will always be here, and I'll be visiting to use my sidebar links to others' beloved blogs and to update my reading lists, but I'll be writing on my Substack and not posting teasers here. Please subscribe if you'd like to read my stuff/drivel/tiny little mother mind™-- it's free and, I think, easy enough. I bat around the idea of ramping up the writing and maybe even asking for paid subscriptions eventually, but for right now, I'm all into the non-transactional thing.

I am grateful for each and every one of you.

Here's the link.

On Waking

 

Check out my substack. Same stuff, different place.

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.

Listicles (in lieu of writing)

 

I haven’t been in these parts for a good long time, and I’ve got nothing. I would say that I’d sort of hit a wall, but I think I hit it a while back and am on the other side in some strange, new and very weird world. I listened to a review of a new novel written by a Very Young Author who got her start or her fame via Yale and then some really good writing of listicles. Everyone loves a listicle. What is a listicle? Carl asked me while we were driving to Huntington Gardens last Friday afternoon. He’s been doing a lot of the driving — ok, all of the driving — what with My Eye Situation, and while I’ve always hated driving with all of ...

Read the rest at my Substack, please, dear Reader.

Planet Eyeball

 

[medical photo of an eyeball on a computer, green and orange with a fringe of eyelash]

                   

My retinal specialist/surgeon took a picture of my healing eyeball yesterday when I went in for my two-week check-up. Those are my eyelashes and up to the left is where the retina tore and has been lasered.  I imagined writing something all deep and insightful about the eye, how I'm looking at me looking or the eye is not like a planet but, rather, a planet, the planet, a globe of blood vessels, the macula, the retina, the optic nerve. No ableism here. Even if you can't see, you can see. 

Take a look.

Before I got my eye put out -- (336)

Emily Dickinson

Before I got my eye put out –

I liked as well to see

As other creatures, that have eyes –

And know no other way –

But were it told to me, Today,

That I might have the Sky

For mine, I tell you that my Heart

Would split, for size of me –

The Meadows – mine –

The Mountains – mine –

All Forests – Stintless stars –

As much of noon, as I could take –

Between my finite eyes –

The Motions of the Dipping Birds –

The Morning’s Amber Road –

For mine – to look at when I liked,

The news would strike me dead –

So safer – guess – with just my soul

Opon the window pane

Where other creatures put their eyes –

Incautious – of the Sun –

[medical photo of an eyeball on a computer, green and orange with a fringe of eyelash]

Ahoy!

The eye is healing, and I am grateful for that. The “bubble” is slowly dropping and my two eyes are working better together, but I still can’t read very well from a book or even on the computer unless I hold things right up close to my right eyeball. I’ve probably not read fiction now for the longest period in my life. No kidding. It’s been a weird few weeks. I’m depressed and trying to rest. I meditate daily and depend on the two Marias to help me with Sophie. Ave Marias. Carl’s been a dream, dropping in the eye drops four times a day and coaxing me out on walks. My sons sent me a box of chocolate covered strawberries today for Valentine’s Day and a note that made me cry. They are, seriously, perfect in many ways. Sophie is good. The world is weird. 

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. 

Occhio, Oeil, Ojo, 眼, глаз, عين eye

 

Who among us — the myopics — knew that we walk around with elongated eyeballs whose vitreous can dissolve or liquefy, and in so doing pull down blood vessels to which it might be adhered or even tear at the retina itself causing a hemorrhage, a flooding of the eye cavity on the inside even while the eye on the outside is looking out the window, its host body sitting in the passenger seat of a car, headed to a nearby park to go on a hike on a beautiful Sunday afternoon? This is what happened to me, and while I am grateful that my retina is not detached, I must have surgery on Thursday morning to address any possible tears or rips. My capacity to learn new words never ceases to astonish me — or not “my capacity” but rather the capacity — retinal detachment, retinal specialist, vitreous, vitrectomy, vitreous humor gel, endolaser, gas-fluid exchange.

Read the rest here.

Apotropaic Devices: I Will LIft Up My Skirt

 

Tonight I watched a recording of a lecture titled "The Vulva's Pilgrimage: Understanding Medieval Genitalia Badges." I bought a ticket to hear this lecture from The London Drawing Group, so in lieu of listening live at some ungodly hour, I received the recorded version and watched it tonight after dinner. The pandemic has made possible a number of things for me, and, no, I'm not going mad. While I've begun a number of crafts and even dabbled in art for the first time in my life, I'm not yet casting vulvas. Yet might be an operative word there. 

Continue reading here.

Shower Blur

I’ve sat down about twenty times this past week, intent on writing something anything but then I just don’t. What is there to say? Why say it? The word meaningless comes to mind or less meaning and I think of coded language.

The rest is on Substack. 

Here you go.

Cue Mrs. Braddock's Laugh Post #4,567,234

Visit my Substack, if you're so inclined:

 https://elizabethaquino.substack.com/p/post-2020-georgia-proud-boys-repugnakins?r=1fjqd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy

Day One 2021

 

Good morning! The picture above is from last night when Carl, Henry, Oliver and I went to Santa Monica and watched the sun go down on 2020. Sophie was at her father's place, so the evening wasn't perfectly perfect, but it was pretty close to perfect being with three men that I love on the beach that I love. When the sun dipped below the horizon, everyone cheered. We drove home and built a little fire in the fire-pit in our backyard, roasted marshmallows and played a game on our phones called Psych or something like that. We drank champagne and whiskey and beer together and laughed and argued but mostly laughed, and it was about the most perfect New Year's Eve I could ever imagine during a pandemic or otherwise, to tell you the truth. I wrote down a few of my current fears and burned them in the fire, and when I went to bed my clothes smelled like smoke. When I woke this morning just before sunrise, my hair still smelled smoky and the moon shone in a band through the back door blinds. I stood there in my mind in the moonlight the year behind us with many ways forward, the rest of it, life, seen through the eyes of the heart.

Stopping and Watching the Leaves (Cimbrian Women)

 

I bought a big Christmas wreath today at a neighborhood Christmas tree lot. I was driving around the big shitty, thinking about the coronavirus and the vaccine and why people are so stubborn yet so hopeful and my tiny little mother mind™ whispered its disappointment in the spoonful of sugar mentality of my countrywomen and men who are most if not all all geared up to be cured by this thing and my tiny little mother mind™ is just sighing and trying not to let the old ghosts run down its labyrinthine corridors with all those little doors behind which are all those little experiences. My tiny little mother mind™ thinks gently about the idea of Terrible America being capable of pulling something like this off given what’s just happened in the last ten months, gently because twenty-five years have taught me to approach gently that which is impossible, the better to hold and bear it along with all the good and beautiful. 

To read more please go to my Substack.

Respite

 

You haven’t seen much of me lately, and I’m sorry for that. I can’t say why, exactly, I haven’t visited and written. 

Read the rest at my Substack.

Dysfunctional Resilience

 Last night I was reading in bed and I heard a crackling sound and then again a rustle and I thought it might be Sophie but I didn't feel like getting out of bed so I kept reading (Homeland Elegies) but that was it, the guilt was creeping in and then I heard coughing a tiny cough a choke, really, so I lay the book down and got out of bed and walked down the hall the short hall and into the darkness of the room where the lady lay the princess lay gurgling. I don't know how to write anymore and remember writing these tales before when I used commas and semi-colons and short muscular verbs. Now it's all run-ons and no punctuation and stream of thought because after nine months of being at home and teaching on Zoom and doing all the usual things with Sophie like marveling at her hair and feeling her grace and changing her diapers and managing her medication and arguing with her insurance company and paying Nice Neurologist to write me scrips and listen to my suggestions for what we should do next, well, there's no other way to get it all down. I flipped on the light and Sophie's lips were dark were they blue? was she breathing? had she had a seizure? where's the pulse-ox? Let's make a long story short (the requisite shall we?). Sophie is ok so no worries all is well thank god (where is god?) and I sat up with her all night, you see, because I knew in that moment that had I not gone into her room at that exact moment she might have died. It feels good to type that out here in the public space that is this old blog for you dear Reader some of you well over a decade. I just knew in my bones that this is how it will happen but that it did not happen not happen last night. I sat up all night and then I fell asleep and woke with a start at ten til nine and Sophie was still sleeping Sleeping Beauty right next to me her lips red red rosed. I had to teach at 9:30 on the Zoom and one of the Marias was coming at 9:00 so I got up from the bower where we lay and made coffee and opened the door to one of the Marias who would be taking over for me. Where was I? My friend Noa from days gone by calls this all of this dysfunctional resilience and I call it a tale, a happily ever after, thickets of thorns and brambles and words and thankfulness to be alive, even now with no punctuation.

Hallelujah

 It was the best day in a long long long long stream of days, wasn't it? When Kamala came out in her white suit, the tears started falling, and I felt absolutely nothing but happy when she spoke and then Joe spoke and then all those people in their families walked up there and all those silly fireworks went off and for a moment -- yes -- I felt glad to be American and to be a part of it. I remember going to a resistance meeting in another lifetime, shortly after walking with three quarters of a million people in downtown Los Angeles on the day after Dear Leader inaugurated himself and we talked so passionately about grassroots activism and what we'd need to do to change things and we did do those things but damn the years went by and wore us down and everything, literally everything, that we thought might happen did and more and nearly destroyed us and did destroy hundreds of thousands of lives but we kept it up. We kept up the calls and the postcards and the letters and the writing and the marching and the protesting and the talking and the arguing and holding people accountable and calling out bullshit when we heard it. We stopped when we were exhausted and other people stepped in. We laughed a lot but we were fucking sick of it all, too. And then this week happened and it was probably the weirdest three days ever, waiting to see what would happen, hunkered down in our homes, stepping over the homeless, ordering our groceries, teaching our kids, wearing our masks and posting memes and wiping up drool and comforting our seizing daughters and reading Twitter and novels and Louise Gluck poems and not sleeping and all the while trying to wrap our minds around the fact that nearly 70 million people who live on the same land actually wanted Dear Leader again, actually voted for the man and justified their votes with their usual talk of pocketbooks and Jesus and Israel and socialism and godlessness and killing babies. 

So, yeah, I'm very happy tonight. It's as if a weight has been lifted and thrown off, far off and we're all ready to do what's next. We hopefully won't ever have to hear from a leader who not only mocked disabled people but actively worked toward and supported and put into place policies that harmed our children. I don't want to ever talk about him again. Tonight, President-Elect Joe Biden included persons with disabilities in his speech and spoke in complete sentences with vigor and not a trace of malice or threat or law and order. He spoke little of himself and much of those who'd put him there up on that stage in Delaware and how wonderful that bells rang in France and people shouted in Germany and people danced in the streets all over this country, this grand and terrible place.

Halfway

 

On Tuesday night, when I saw 65 million people had voted for the man we call President in Terrible America, and after I'd felt disappointed then depressed then terrified then enraged then numb I threw the IChing, drew Hexagram 37 by tracing my hand writing writing writing into fingers and thumbs over palm, hunched over the tile table in my dining room. Hexagram 37 is Family (What will become of us? I'd asked). Be certain, however, that you are not involved in carrying out a role for which you are unsuited, or a role that has been cast upon you. This will rob your life of meaning. Every line of the hexagram changed, an occurrence that in the nearly forty years I've been using it, I've never seen. Skip straight to the transformed hexagram when all lines change. Look it up look it up look it up and then read Hexagram 40 (Liberation) which is sometime in the future so I eventually stood up minutes hours later peanut butter ghost redolent and walked down my dark hallway to the bedroom. It's a short walk but about when I'd gotten halfway my children smiling down from the wall of years the slant of moonlight disguised by the blue blinking LED light from the box over the door that waves in this constant stream of information to my room my sanctuary my sleep, I felt  suddenly enlightened (halfway) not by ghosts or peanut butter or Jesus or hands or Chinese oracles but by my persistent unconscious which was screaming exceptionalism is a lie. It was as if a hand were placed on the top of my head palm down the fingers draped over forehead (halfway) my eyes closed breathing there in the hallway (halfway) soothed.

Now it's Thursday and it's all a lot.

The sea is so big

Did I tell you that Oliver surprised me by coming home for a week? He did. It was so wonderful to lay eyes on that face, and I even hugged him. He's gone again -- back to Arizona -- and I'm feeling that strange melancholy that besets us when our loved ones leave or we leave them. 

How is everybody doing? You can be honest because I will, too. I'm not doing so great. I'm actively trying to do all the things that ease the mind and calm the spirit and give perspective and maintain equanimity and count your blessings and do for others and look outward and create in the face of fuck (as my friend Lidia Yuknavitch) says, but I went for a short walk to the CVS to pick up Sophie's poison and passed a dirty guy lying on the sidewalk next to his tent in what appeared to be savasana pose a grin as wide as his face his eyes closed. The CVS, like a lot of stores in my neighborhood is all boarded up in anticipation of the Day After the Election when, I suppose, extremists from any group might be out marauding. Speaking of extremists, yesterday, I passed a small group of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and boys. They were dressed in their usual religious garb but also sported masks with TRUMP emblazoned across them. Strange bedfellows, I thought to myself and my tiny little mother mind™ mused on the concept of modesty which I'd experienced during my days teaching English literature to an ultra-religious Jewish sect earlier in the year. I wore the stockings and the long skirts, covered my clavicle and my elbows and my knees,  even when bent. Men of the faith, apparently, are able to sport the moniker of a grotesque con man who mocks disabled people and grabs women by their pussy, though, and it's like being Gulliver these days traveling through the streets both literally and figuratively of Terrible America, the arrogance and laissez-faire and people getting back to normal lamenting how Halloween is so different this year it's so hard for the children and on and on and yes, I know it's grief and loss and all of it is hard and even relative but really?

 "It is coming into election week in the U.S. I am here, on this side of the Atlantic, looking at the other side of that ocean. So much has happened in the sea between us: ships shipping enslaved people, hungry people, desperate people; ships going to a land they called uninhabited from a Europe that prefers to forget its history. As I think about how reparations and justice can be enacted, I’m reminded of an old Breton prayer: God help me, because the sea is so big and my boat is so small. "

Pádraig Ó Tuama
host of Poetry Unbound

 

Past Participle

You can read my post here.

Watercolor Wash

 

New post here.