Little Birds Everywhere

 

What it looks like every morning when the sun rises

I think all I want to do right now is cook and read and write. And talk on the phone to my old friends. Like Louise and Jessica and Sarah and Moye and Chris and Tanya and Debra and Johanna. I want to read and write and cook and talk on the phone with women. The books are piling up around me, and I don't care anymore. I went to Loews today and bought some plants. I bought some dirt, too, even though that's so weird. Buying dirt. My car is coated in ash. So is the apple tree in my backyard, the little apple tree with bent boughs heavy with fruit. It's impossible to describe apples trees bent with fruit without using cliche. The word groan. I bought some stakes and ties to help the boughs. I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know what type of apple tree this is and whether I should pick them.  Yet. Sophie is sleeping. She seems exhausted. She is not beset by seizures these days but sleeps a lot, like some fairy tale princess. I'm besotted with a writer who writes about fairy tales. Her name is Sabrina Orah Mark. Have you read her work? I'm reading a book written about wild women and wolves -- you know the one because it's been around forever -- and it embarrasses me sometimes. It's too. Too too. I'm reading it with two of my students, and then we will look at Anne Sexton's confessional poems, her transformations. But then there's "The Handless Maiden." Have you ever read "The Handless Maiden?" You should. You should read all the fairy tales, actually, because they're all.

I'm reading Chanel Miller's memoir, Know My Name and I'm reading The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley and I'm saving Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell because I think I won't be able to stand it it'll be so good. I'm anticipating that it'll be one of those every five years or so books that I read. Do you know what I mean? Never mind.

I'm watching Friday Night Lights (the series) for the second time with The Bird Photographer. He points out the racial cliches, and I feel defensive until I don't. I don't know why I love this series as it's about two things I hate. Football and Texas. Well, I don't hate Texas,  but I do hate football. Unequivocally.

Last night I had a hideous nightmare. I was wearing a football helmet in the dream and my ex-husband had his fingers in it and was about to bite off my tongue. I had to write that out. It helped me. I screamed so loudly that I woke myself up. I was screaming in my dream and in real life. I can't remember when the last time was that I've had such a nightmare. It seems obvious what this dream means, but feel free to give me your best interpretations. 

I feel sick for our country and right now, particularly, our beloved west coast. My friends in Oregon and Washington, my god. All up and down we are burning and choking and every single morning the sun comes up baleful and orange. Ash covers everything, and there are a lot of little birds everywhere. I mean a lot. I think they must be from up north. The Bird Photographer said probably when I asked him, so I made a little fountain for them and put out more bird seed. I am hoping that The Tenant's (ask me about The Tenant sometime as it's not a pretty story, not a fairy tale not even a nightmare) cats steer clear. I do not like cats. Sorry.

My friend Ebony (whom I neglected to list up there) texted me an article about a motel in Orlando whose owner has left where the power is out, the garbage is piled up, drugs, rats, children, all the miseries of the world and just down the street from the Disney bubble where basketball players are playing their hearts out in a bubble, their Covid watches blinking, their owners counting cash. 

Yesterday I joined a Zoom call with a small group of women (five of us) from around the country. I knew none of them, but now I do. We wrote postcards to swing states, urging people on lists to vote. Dear Janice. Thank you for being a first-time voter. Who you vote for is secret, but your voting record is public information. After the election on Tuesday, November 3rd, local organizations may contact you about your voting record. Thank you! Elizabeth. It was a script, and I thought it sounded a little coercive, not to mention the use of the word who instead of whom, but I dutifully wrote it down because there had been marketing and studies showing that it worked. There are good people all over this country working hard figuring things out. Despite there being only five of us on this Zoom call,  I felt cheered. We are doing this. We can do this. We chatted. One of the women is somewhat famous. I told her about my parents, how they came together. What an interesting story! she said. Over one hour, I wrote and addressed and stamped 12 postcards. I ordered 200 and gave some to friends to write. I've got about 60 more to go, and it's pleasant work. Honestly. It seems inane and hopeful.

All Things Bookish

I read this today from Louise Erdrich's new novel The Night Watchman:

And Patrice thought another thing her mother said was definitely true -- you never really knew a man until you told him you didn't love him. That's when his true ugliness, submerged to charm you, might surface.

Oooh boy. 








On Friday night I joined a virtual silent reading that I heard about from my beloved friend, poet Heather McHugh. The thing originated at a hotel somewhere in Seattle and was a yearly affair where you basically showed up, I think, at the hotel bar, alone with a book. And then that was it. You sat at the bar or in the bar at the little tables and just read your book. Alone. For two hours. While a man played the piano. You could drink and eat little plates of food, but mostly you read and looked up and around at the other solo people reading and what they were reading. And then back down at your own book. So, this year given The Pandemic, the Silent Reading was virtual. I signed up, paid a small donation and joined the Zoom thing at 6:00 on Friday night with nearly 300 people. Reader, this is the kind of thing that makes me truly and perfectly happy. It's the ultimate reading dream. I made myself a plate of sheep's milk cheese, crackers, soppressata, french fries, olives and a glass of wine. I read The Night Watchman and I read from Sharon Olds' new collection titled Arias. I peered at the tiny thumbnail portraits of all the people sitting in their homes reading. I lay my head back on my chair and closed my eyes and listened to the piano music that poured out of this guy for the entire two hours. I saw Heather's smiling face in early evening light and the book she was reading, something by Borges and once again felt overwhelmed by her beauty and what she's brought to my life since I've met her. Understanding. Humor. Caregiving. Poetry. She's got a fabulous new website/podcast thing going in anticipation of her new book of poems, Muddy Matterhorn.  Check out her sound files here.





What else? I guess the usual -- vacillating between a strange ennui and ridiculous industriousness. Noticing everything that is ugly and stupid and false about our country in particular and so not anything like or ever has been shining on a hill even as the oak hydrangea flowers chartreuse, the acacia tree leafs out, the succulents thrust their onanistic blooms three feet in the air overnight and the hummingbirds clash with one another in irritation or ecstasy who knows but the bees are profuse and there's a Coopers hawk nesting in my neighbor's tree, the Orthodox family next door has five laughing screaming children and the Los Angeles sky is empty of planes. A loved one misunderstands who I am or confirms again that I am not known, digs around in an old place only just barely buried under dark dark earth. I worry for my sons, vacillating like me between ennui what's the point, confusion, and the delight of new recipes (a lemon-parmesan emulsion for pasta!) Their dark brown eyes. I imagine how the world might use two incredibly beautiful men with hearts as big as the sky. I dream of firemen not doctors.

After My Sabbatical: Tiny Tidbits About My Last Job

I have not actually been on a sabbatical, although I wish that I had and I wish that I could return to somewhere, anywhere back to reading and writing and otherwise not taking part being part of this period in the world's general history, the triumph and toppling of materialism and stupidity the emperor with no clothes the professional sports world the cult of celebrity the impossibility of publishing the tyranny of the politically correct and most of all the rise of Bernie. I just do not feel the bern the burn the whatever it is you who do do. My younger sister worked as an intern for Bernie back in the last century or should I say millennium and every time I see the Bern or Bernie I think of what she heard every day for the duration of her internship and that was Jennifah! Get me a tuna on rye!

I was, am a Warren lover, and I don't understand why an energetic intelligent woman with many plans, a woman who's fought successfully against The Man the bankers the corrupt the plutocracy and has a history of sensitivity for the disabled for children for special education is losing has lost to two elderly men one who's nearly doddering who sat and railed against Anita Hill back in the day, his day when he should have done better and the other who screams more than talks who has visions and no realistic plans who had a heart attack quite recently and whose followers are legion but include easily IMHO as the kids say the same sort of dense folks who back the naked emperor in chief just from the other side of the proverbial coin. And if they're not those followers, the bros or whatever they're called, I suspect they're following him because it's cool to like someone so uncool.

I will very much support the Bern the Burn if he is the person who runs against the Piece of Shit.

I've thought about things to write in this space, ways to communicate and what to tell you, dear Reader and I come up short. I bought a green bra and panties the other day, the most lovely color green. I flew to Atlanta to visit my mother and my father, had a wonderful time hanging with them, realizing that I am so incredibly blessed to have parents who are truly parents. We don't see eye to eye on politics (they're best left unsaid) and their views are such that I've felt near despair over the last four years, especially, but somehow it didn't feel that way this visit and I'm not going to wonder why.

Buried deep within this post is a tidbit. A tiny tidbit. On one of my last days at the ultra-Orthodox Jewish girls' school where I worked (see previous post), there was some talk in the teachers' lounge about Trump, and Mitt Romney had just voted "Yes" to impeach the PieceofShitPresidentoftheDisunitedStates and I never, never, never talked about my politics in this place because there's no good in talking politics when Israel is part of the equation but I said I just didn't understand how anyone could support That Man and someone else said, "He loves Israel," and so I stood up and said, "I can't be involved in any conversation that supports That Man," and I walked out and into the office and sat down to do a little grading while I steamed. The thing is, Reader, at this school I was prevented from teaching anything that had anything that was suggestive of romance. I mean things like longing gazes in a Willa Cather's Song of the Lark. I mean suicide in Marilyn Robinson's transcendent Housekeeping. I mean the word hell in an article from The New York Times. I mean Nathaniel Hawthorne's rich allegorical short story Rappaccini's Daughter because it mentions The Garden of Evil. When I referenced the great Spanish architect Gaudi in a poem we were studying by a contemporary deaf poet named Raymond Antrobus and asked the students if they'd ever been to Barcelona and they said yes and I asked whether they'd seen the amazing cathedral and one girl said, What's a cathedral? and because I'd been teaching there for a year and a half, I knew there was a distinct possibility that a seventeen year old girl might not even know what a cathedral was, I told her. Then I was told We are not allowed to go into cathedrals, and I said, Oh. And this was later confirmed by one of the Powers That Be and still I said Oh when what I was thinking was that we are all screwed here in this world. Back to the office where I sat sweating and biting my sharp, sharp tongue that so desperately wanted, was trying with all its half-century honed might to scream:

You protect your daughters from reading Nathaniel Hawthorne and Willa Cather but support the Pussy-Grabber-In-Chief?

Reader, it's a good thing that I am no longer working at this school. I learned a lot there -- about intolerance, to tell you the truth, and about its masks. Given these girls' behavior in general -- which was, frankly, closer developmentally to those who've just entered adolescence than those leaving it for marriage and babies -- I can only surmise that their rituals, their blind belief system and oppressive rules and regulations regarding every single thing they wear, eat and do make them uniquely unable to live in the world, much less listen to their silly, old lefty progressive English teacher, Elizabeth Aquino.

Did I mention how stressful it was dealing with this school and these girls and the idea that there are legions of people out there preventing 17 and 18 year old females from reading Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own because it would just open the floodgates (one of the teachers actually said this to me) yet supporting a serial sexual assaulter and vile racist misogynist because he's been so good to Israel? Did I tell you about the Cup-o-Noodles girl last year? The sad thing is that I was so into my job last year.

Jennifah, get me a tuna on rye!



#VoteBlueNoMatterWho

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.

 

Pictures, You Need Pictures: Part 1: London and Just Outside of London

First of all, when I was planning this trip, my friend Sarah who hosted me asked me what I wanted to see. I told her that I wasn't interested in the royals or jewels, but I wanted to see Blake's drawings and watercolors at the Tate. THERE WAS A BLAKE RETROSPECTIVE AT THE TATE MODERN.

What are the chances?

 I might have geeked out seeing so much Blake in one place.

And the people in London were exceptionally London-like.

The show was so overwhelming that we went out into the country the next day. The country estate we visited was EXACTLY what I imagined the country to be like.  The house itself was old and shabby inside, and to be honest, I don't care much for fancy houses except the downstairs. I'm a downstairs kind of person, I declared. Sarah said that she would feel quite at home in charge. I imagined myself as Jane Eyre. Truly.

Did anyone else pretend that you were Jane Eyre, a poor orphan put upon by wicked relatives?

When we went to the "walled garden," I was Mary in "The Secret Garden." I realized how much these places lived in my imagination, put there by books and poems in a lifetime of reading. The apple orchard smelled like apples, something I bet you haven't really smelled in America unless you've been to one.

 Friends for more than 35 years, Sarah took complete and total care of me. Honestly, I was in a bit of a jet-lagged daze, and I vaguely remember having a bit of a mini, silent tantrum walking in the rain (Sarah agreed that I was quite a weather wimp), but she and her beautiful family.restored me. I am so very grateful for these dear and beautiful women friends I made so long ago.

Those are apples on the ground, and they smelled like apples.

Have you had enough?

Because there were sheep, too.

To top it all off, we went to a pub afterward and had beer with STEVE REED, my blogger friend that I've "known" for nearly ten years.

Honestly, it felt like Steve was someone I'd known for real for many years. We talked about books and Brexit (I still don't what the hell Brexit is and why it even happened in the first place, but then again, who the hell knows why we have Trump, either, and how the hell that happened) and movies and laughed and had such a good time.

Stay tuned for Part 2: London and then Part 3: Rome

Mushroom Spaceship

I don't even know how to write in this space anymore. I don't know how to write in any space anymore. I don't know what space I'm actually occupying anymore. I don't know if I'm even a writer at all anymore. My best writer friends are always so very busy writing.  I am busy not writing or should I say (write) not busy writing. It's only words. I might be beginning my life as not a writer.  I didn't write for ten years when baby Sophie was diagnosed and maybe I'm on another ten-year bender that I'm hard put to blame on anyone but possibly it's the pospotus and possibly it's because there are members of my family who are still devoted to him and the republican party and possibly it's just because I turned 56 the other day and my hips started hurting in the middle of the night to mark the occasion and make a mockery of my otherwise robust physical health that I've taken for granted by never exercising and eating cake without regrets. I went for a vigorous walk today, though, on the second of September in the two thousand twentieth year of our lord jesus and came upon a mushroom spaceship  (speaking of space) that had just landed, and a tiny door opened on the underside and I saw a tiny little creature inside and a vast world beyond, beckoning, and I almost did it, almost left.

Maybe it's because I miss Oliver and will soon miss Henry as he's off to a semester in Italy later this week.

I don't want to lose touch here, though, lose the community of beloveds. So, I'm here doing what's not really writing but was it ever really writing anyway?

See, I've nothing to write that isn't a whine. Or is it whinge? Does anyone use the word whinge? Reader, look it up and just listen to how it's pronounced! God, I do love words even though I'm not writing them.

As per the history of my fifty-six years on the planet, I'm still reading words. Right now it's Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive (it's a slow read but good and has a rad structure that would be inspiring if I were a writer) and Darcy Steinke's Flash Count Diary (menopause and orcas) and an amazing graphic memoir called Good Talk by Mira Jacob.

Reading, she said, is my only constant.

In other news, my job as Teacher of English Literature begins this week, and I am so excited. I've missed the girls over the summer and am not even whinging about the hosiery I'll have to put on despite the dog days heat.

I should have always been a teacher instead of writer.

Beloved

The world is in this room. This here's all there is and all there needs to be.

Sethe, from Beloved 

It seems like everyone is mourning the death of Toni Morrison, and I've been tearing up off and on all day thinking of her, of her spirit, her words, her regal presence, her books, what she meant to me my entire adult life, as a reader and a writer and a human being, and then I was thinking of all the people slaughtered over the weekend, of the piles of dead children, of the human stain of racism in our country, of all that we have to do, to fix and how to be. I first saw Toni Morrison at Spelman College in the late 1980s, shortly after Beloved was published, and I sat in a huge auditorium with hundreds of people, mostly African American young women, and before She walked out onto the stage, a group of women played drums, the beat so steady and rhythmical they presaged her voice, her voice with the words, always, that she put on the page. She walked out, probably at the age I am now, and I was struck then by her presence and by the impact she had had on the women in the room. She was their voice. I read nearly every single thing she wrote. The second time I saw her was not too long ago in Los Angeles, in a theater downtown filled with the mix that is Los Angeles, yet when she walked into the room, she was so grand, so regal, her voice so rich and deep with humor and wisdom, all of us so rapt and smiling and nodding our heads that I thought then: she is all of our voices.

Rest in peace and power, Toni Morrison. Thank you.


This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you've got.

Toni Morrison, in an interview with writer Pam Houston, Oprah Magazine,  2003

The Small of the Back

Some Venus

The folds of this ancient goddess' stomach. Her foot's low arch.



A memory:
When I hear the crunch of steps on gravel, outside the apartment, I know it's not him because he is so quiet. I lie there on the bed, wrapped in sheets, waiting. It is warm. The plastic blinds click together as the breeze runs through them. The word rustle. Later, his hand on the small of my back. A hand on the small of the back is a beautiful gesture. Resting there. On the small of the back. 





I wrote this down in my small blue leather notebook:

The new way to live: reading and reading and coming up to take a look around

I don't know if I heard that or thought it myself, but it's a good one.







I'm dipping into Toni Morrison's new book The Source of Self-Regard, and I've just begun Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe. I'm finishing Sigrid Nunez' novel The Friend, and I've loved it. Sigrid was at Hedgebrook with me, finishing that book. She is a lovely person, someone I wish I knew better, especially after reading her book. It's curious and funny and sharp and original. I wish I could finish my book. Maybe I will later this month when I retreat to Mexico with the Bird Photographer. Immediately after I type that, I feel I need to explain. Explain how I can go to Mexico, explain how I can get away. Do I need to explain? I have a free place to stay, a generous gift from a dear friend. Sophie's father and Saint Mirtha will take care of her while I'm gone. I am determined to get away, to take respite when it is offered, by whatever means I can. Yet, I explain. We define ourselves by how much we can suffer, and who am I otherwise?







In other words, I'm reading and reading and coming up to take a look around.

Back to School

I've got so many books that I've started wearing them on my back. Marie Kondo, mondo and all that jazz. Are ya'll watching that show on Netflix? I plan on checking it out as I've resisted that whole cultural phenomenon that appears to cater primarily to the privileged with me, privileged but rather content in the organized clutter that I call home.  Right now I'm trying to get into Circe, a book that was recommended by a slew of people whose opinions I admire and trust, but it's sort of mythological and sort of fantasy and -- well -- I just can't get into it. I'm at the age where I don't continue reading books that haven't grabbed me by, say, page 50. Bye, bye Circe. Hello Elaine Pagel's Why Religion. I've read Pagel's writing, and it's difficult and fascinating and right up my alley. I guess some of you would argue that religion is fantasy and myth, so then given my aversion to both genres, why would I read it? I don't know what to tell you, other than at one point I looked into getting a Master's degree in Religious Studies/Comparative Religion.

In any case, I STARTED MY NEW JOB TODAY. Yes, Sirree Bob, as they say. I've got this new job teaching English to 11th and 12th grade girls in a very, very strict religious school. It's not a Catholic school by the way, so I'm not dressed as a Flying Nun, but I'm dressed in a way that is not customary for me, and while it's not uncomfortable, I do feel a bit like an embedded journalist in a country far, far away. Taking notes, with deep respect and curiosity and a tiny bit of ambivalence about the culture in which I am thrust, black clad and modest.

I love Los Angeles as it's a place where all these different cultures collide -- under the sun, of course, with a new governor and a whole lot of lefties and a smattering of conservatives (just enough to add some "diversity" but not enough to encroach upon our liberal ways). And what the hey is going on with the POSPOTUS and the government shutdown? I'm sorry if you're a furloughed worker and hope that this is all resolved, and we can quit thinking about walls and spikes and concrete and hordes of terrorists rabidly climbing over and into our lives.

The girls were wonderful today -- bright and sweet and outspoken and even a little outrageous. I had some exchanges, stared into some very warm brown eyes and knew immediately whom I was going to love because love is a serious word (she told me) even as I'll be driven crazy.

It's all good.

Tell me what you're reading. Tell me what you'd like to read if you were an 11th or 12th grade girl and have some strict reading guidelines (no sex, no violence, no molestation, etc.). I'm making up a list of book suggestions and need your help.

Working Stiff

Street graffiti, Los Angeles, 2019

I finally got a job that I'm excited about, and it begins next week. I've been applying for various positions from a site called Indeed for the last year, and I was beginning to believe that it might be a front for some kind of data gathering Russian bot/Facebook thingamajig because literally nothing came out of it. I'm perfectly aware that I have my limitations at the age of 55, and I didn't bother applying to the kind of grunt work that offered a salary that would quickly be swallowed up by Saint Mirtha, but damn, it was demoralizing and all death of a salesman around here until Christmas week when I was hired to teach English literature and writing part time in a small private school for girls. The school is very small and very religious, with strict dress codes for both the students and the teachers. That's all I'll say about that. I am very excited and a tiny bit nervous but extremely grateful to have found something that perfectly fits the erratic schedule and overwhelming duties of my other job as CEO of Sophie, Inc. I will be jumping right in on Monday with the girls already reading Frankenstein. 

I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other. 

from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein








The universe is abundant.

I've run away and found my dream house

Who knew that it would be in Spokane, Washington?

My new home is named Gilda, which happens to be my beautiful, now-deceased aunt's name. She gave me a copy of The Hobbit when I was seven years old and made my first holy communion, which I promptly read and -- well -- you know the rest of my history of reading. I tell you this because I have always loved the idea of hobbit residences, small cosy cottages, and this is exactly my dream house.

In all honesty, I am up in Spokane helping to move Henry into his new dorm room. I didn't think he wanted me to come up with him this year, but when I asked him what day he needed a plane ticket and he said, Aren't you coming with me? and I said, Oh, do you want me to come with you? and he said, Yes! I want you to help me and also meet my roommate! and I said, Well, I guess. Ha ha ha ha ha. Do you want to?

So here we are. Unlike Dream House Gilda, Henry's new dorm room is named The Ugliest Dorm Room in the Disunited States of America.

Notice the blue PLASTIC curtains. I won't share the picture of the communal bathroom out in the hallway. I snuck inside to use it and was barely able to sit down on the toilet without my knees hitting the door. I was literally about one inch from reading the Potty Talk Newspaper that was taped on the door, educating me about social justice issues. Today we will be shaping up the ship, visiting Target. I'll post an "after" shot, but in the meantime, know that the two guys living there will lend it a degree of beauty that it might never have seen.

Fun fact: Henry's roommate has several siblings with special needs and is, according to Henry, the nicest person he's ever met. 

That's either completely wild and random or, there are no accidents, as my friend Carrie says.

Hummingbird

The Bird Photographer brought that tiny carved hummingbird back from Costa Rica recently and gave it to me, so I hung it above my bed. Honestly? My favorite thing to do is lie on my back on my bed and while away the minutes, do absolutely nothing but stare at the ceiling and watch the late afternoon light play across the walls, and now the hummingbird who drifts a bit, rotates round. That and reading.

I've been exercising these days. I've been going to a dance class called Kardio Krunk. Don't laugh. Or, rather, laugh all you want. The class is taught by this beautiful man who is also working with me one on one as a personal trainer once a week. I bought myself five sessions with all that money I got back from the POSPOTUS' tax reform. I had my first full blown anxiety attack when I went for my initial assessment. I'd love to regale you with the details, but suffice it to say that at one point I was curled into the fetal position on the floor of the beautiful man's studio with an ice pack under my chin. It wasn't the assessment that did it to me -- I swear I'm not that pathetic and out of shape. It was this weird feeling that literally overtook me. One moment I was lifting weights up over my head and the next my entire shitty life was passing through me, and I mean shitty. I had in a sort of simultaneous rush just about every superficial thought you can imagine -- from how fat and ugly and out of shape I was, how insurmountable the goal of losing weight and being fit to how unfair it was to be a caregiver of a child with disabilities for more than two decades and still not have shapely arms.  There was some divorce in there, too, and the state of my stomach, and seizures, of course, and just all of it. Cue: laughter. The Kardio Krunk guy was very patient and very calm as I went through this, and while I didn't voice anything but moans and I swear to god I've never had an anxiety attack before!, I actually cried, and he assured me that he'd seen it plenty of times before. I found this hard to believe, given that it's Los Angeles, but he was nice to say so. He believed my sudden swoon to be a surge of adrenaline and endorphins, coupled with an anxiety attack. Aside from the few moments on the floor when I didn't care if I died or not, given how bad I felt, I was more curious than embarrassed to be so betrayed by both my body and mind. They honestly worked together that afternoon in spectacular concert which is actually pretty cool if you think about it.

Since then, I've been back to see him a couple of times, and I'm doing better. I've taken two Kardio Krunk classes where I attempt to keep up with the class doing intricate dance moves, including twerking, as very very loud hip hop music plays, all while avoiding looking at myself in the giant mirror that runs the length of the studio. If I so much as glance up at myself, I lose my count or the step or the beat or the twerk and want to just lie down on the floor and give it all up to the lord.

When I get home, I lie on my back on my bed and stare at the ceiling, my mind drifting with the tiny wooden hummingbird floating above me. My face is red and my legs are quivery. I can hardly unbend my arms, but I don't feel miserable. I feel exhilarated, like I'm already fit and light, like my life is endless and there's still time.

Carried by Great Winds

There I am with what I called 2/3rds of the circus that I run. The work of my heart. Mother's Day came and went. The College Boy is home for the summer. The Brothers are back at it. Sophie had a rough weekend but is better today. I'm going through loads of paperwork and hustling for freelance jobs. I'm baking cakes. I'm answering calls and emails and appeals for help regarding medical cannabis. I'm working on an exciting caregiver project that I'll tell ya'll about soon. I'm reading novels and excited to start watching the Patrick Melrose mini-series. I read those brutal and beautiful books years ago and so look forward to seeing Benedict Cumberbatch playing the lead.

Here's a poem that my friend Noan sent me the day before Mother's Day. It's by Alison Luterman, and I think it's perfect:

Invisible Work

Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, "It's hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces fro dinner,
and there's no one
to say what a good job you're doing,
how you were patient and loving
for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."
And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
because I am lonely,
when all the while,
as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
by great winds across the sky,
thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,
the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
the way worms in the garden
tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
and bees ransack this world into being,
while owls and poets stalk shadows,
our loneliest labors under the moon.

There are mothers
for everything, and the sea
is a mother too,
whispering and whispering to us
long after we have stopped listening.
I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world's heart.There is no other art. 

Allison Luterman



A long time ago one of my relatives, from whom I am now estranged, wrote a caustic comment on this blog, imploring me to get my head out of my ass and quit reciting poetry. Something like that. It stung then because there was a bit of truth in my head being up my ass. I felt a bit of the old shame and embarrassment at being bookish, having my head in the clouds, being book smart as opposed to street smart, pretentious instead of easy-going. 

Whatevs, as they say. The thing about being more than half a century old combined with living in the Trump era, is that you can shed all that shame and run for the hills with your poetry, bringing anyone willing along with you.

What else? I went to see an incredible interpretive theater thing called the theater is a blank page by Ann Hamilton and Siti Company at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus this past Saturday. I might as well have been raptured up right there, as it was a wild interactive theater performance of Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse, hands-down probably my favorite novel ever.* I don't even know how to describe the experience that my friend Tanya, Chris and I had attending this show, but it was restorative and mesmerizing, and we all left feeling -- again -- like we'd been raptured into a writer/reader/lover of words heaven. Check it out if it comes to your town. Here's a video that I found on the internets of part of the performance in another city:




Also, if you're not one of the more than 115 MILLION people who've already watched Childish Gambino's incredible performance piece This is America, you should. I've said it before, but in these messed-up, clusterfuckery times, art and corporeal politics can save us.













* My Top Ten Favorite Novels

1. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
2. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
4. Middlemarch by George Eliot
5. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
6. Beloved by Toni Morrison
7. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
8. Love in the Name of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
9. Machine Dreams by Jayne Ann Phillips
10. Possession by A.S. Byatt

Who am I kidding? I didn't even list the children's books that should rank up there. It's virtually impossible for me to narrow down my favorite novels to ten, but those are the ones that come immediately to mind. What are yours, Reader?