That weekend we turned the bed into a raft in the middle of the oceanic chaos of life. Dressed in pajamas that doubled as tatters from our shipwrecks, we pulled up buckets of food from the market downstairs and ate them with our hands. During the day we played games with dice and told stories we'd gathered from other sailors, other shipwrecks. The dragons and the sirens that circled us were visible, horrible terrors, but I trusted the safety of our vessel. You found chocolate in a kit that floated by and fed it to me in small bittersweet squares. From time to time the waves of our narrow escape washed over the edges and at night we held fast to each other in the center of the raft, safe and dry while our dreams rocked us to sleep. Nightmares, too, to be fair, but we weathered the storms. We did not even hoist a flag; we did not expect or wish to be rescued. So happy were we to still be alive and together that we did not think beyond that moment, or at least I did not. On the last day we woke and I thought we would create a new island and explore it together, more adventures and maybe stories around a campfire, the structure of our imaginary world was already taking beautiful shape in my mind. In my heart. And you turned to me and said, "I'm not like you. I never wanted to spend the whole weekend in bed in my pajamas."
Author: tuckova
Interests: Alfons Mucha, Archibald Leach, big words, Bob Hicok, Brian Eno, Cat Power, Charles Bukowski, Charlotte Masaryk, cheese, clarity, dark chocolate, David Byrne, David Foster Wallace, Dorothy Parker, Douglas Adams, Edna St. Vincent Millay, E.E. Cummings, Frank O'Hara, Fred Rogers, garlic, Gaudi, Gertrude Stein, ginger, Gustav Klimt, Iva Pekarkova, Jane Austen, Jaromir Nohavica, Jeanette Winterson, Josef Skvorecky, Joseph Campbell, Joss Whedon, Just a Minute, Kate Bush, Kurt Vonnegut, laughing until it hurts, Laurie Anderson, Leonard Cohen, little kids singing, Lloyd Alexander, mandarin oranges, making lists, Margaret Atwood, Miss Manners, New Yorker, Paul Simon, performance, P.G. Wodehouse, poetry, Rebecca Solnit, Rob Brezsny, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Creeley, salt, Salvador Dali, secrets, silence, Star Trek, Stephen Dunn, Talking Heads, Terry Gilliam, things that stain, This American Life, Tom Waits, T.S. Eliot, vegetable juice, veiled cultural references, vinegar, water, wine, W.H. Auden
ew politics
This election has me rattled and make no mistake. My normal policy is to get enough information to make up my mind and then move on; I don't have so much time in my life that I need to spend any of it learning anything about a candidate I've already decided against. I also don't watch "anti-hero" television shows or hang out with assholes. Still, there's a part of me that enjoys the delicious shiver of an insect in an unexpected place and so I have watched the debates. They give me nightmares.
I sometimes feel like I should go around stating to people who I am that makes Trump personally repulsive to me and I've fought the urge because it goes beyond personal revulsion. I can say that as a woman I find his sexism disgusting; that as an atheist I find his leanings towards religious tests incredibly backwards and threatening; that as a queer person I hear his "traditional marriage" dogwhistles and shudder; and that as an immigrant, I find his stance on immigration to be ridiculous, even if just in empathy with immigrants to the US. But then the implication is that I'm only reacting in my own self-interest… which, though it seems to distinguish me from a number of his supporters, is not entirely the case. I'm slightly whiter than milk and his racism is still revolting to me.
And I guess maybe this is why it's scary? Because I feel like as a human being, sometimes at a disadvantage (though very often at an advantage), I am able to imagine how it might be for other human beings in different circumstances. So I have trouble understanding the stunning lack of empathy coming from the supporters of a racist, sexist, xenophobic, etc etc. horrorshow. They don't even seem to understand how much he disrespects them, so eager are they to be on his side disrespecting the other groups he scorns. How can women support him? Mexicans? Muslims? People with the ability to make complete sentences? Is it just the played up fear of coming in last that motivates people to perceive the world as a competition they can never win unless they step on the other competitors, rather than try to see themselves as being on a team where the shared strength of every team member means winning on a larger scale?
So I think about that, about how I can understand that. I think about the GOP and Frankenstein and who the monster really was. I think about the internet and how the very thing that has made life so glorious for me (the ability to know about and connect with a world beyond my immediate neighborhood) seems to make the world so terrifying for other people, and what that means. I think about these things and then I fall asleep to dreams of a house where I am always hiding behind a panel, holding my breath, waiting. I've saved space for you here if you want to come hide with me until November 9th. I'm not ready to entertain the idea that it might be necessary after.
O Me! O Life!
There are many plates spinning in the air which is sort of my usual except a little more than that. The cat died, we sold the cottage, I got dual citizenship. None of these things are bad but all of these things take extra time and attention.
My parents are coming for the party to celebrate my new Czech citizenship, and one of my oldest and dearest friends is here from California, too, which is great. Also people coming from Vienna, Prague, Berlin. And of course a lot of the people I love here in Brno. I've never thrown myself a party (I've thrown plenty of parties but never in honor of my own personal awesomeness) and it feels weird. A few days ago, I tried out the idea that this is not a party to celebrate my 22 years of living here, raising a child in a language I was just learning to speak, memorizing important facts like the birthplace of Mr. Cimrman, and generally just rocking the Czech life. I mean it IS but also this makes me feel wayyyy too self conscious. So actually this is a party to thank all the people, old and new, who have made my life here the amazing thing that it is, and that makes sense and felt better. People have been incredible to me and I am so ridiculously lucky it makes my head spin, so this is a good place to mark my gratitude. And buy the first round or so.
Sometimes I get really bogged in feeling sad because there is ugliness in the world, casual ugliness like selfishness all the way to downright brutality. Last week I was crying about it, about how hard it is to live in a world where we open ourselves every damn day to indifference, to egotism, to cruelty. Sitting in your little kitchen at night smoking down another cigarette, tears streaming down my face, because how can we go on in a world with so much horror, how can we tolerate it and push past it and keep our faces and hearts open to beauty and love, and if I, so honestly blessed and lucky, can barely do it, how can anyone who truly suffers manage? How can we keep going?
The answer I remembered then is the same as it's ever been: Friendship. Good food. And poetry. Over and over again.
words made flesh
Nails that were bitten back for years, the stunted beds telling the history of decades of gnawing, like a rat or more correctly a mouse, the wearing down the result of compulsive nibbles, over and over, through the keratin, also through the rough bits of skin, torn cuticles, fingers shamecurled into palms when it comes time to meet ladies. Finally after years. each nail capped with a half moon of self-control and now we find we are picking at other things. We want to be smooth, to be without blemish, polished marble. Museum quality. There are scabs and they are awful, brown crusts of things that happened some time ago, and we tear them off with our newly sharp nails and they bleed and crust and we tear them. Picking scabs, feral, crouched in a corner with tangled hair and a mouth full of blood. The taste of old pennies. No, today we are more careful, today we are smiling across the table, that smile that is the tips of the teeth and cool blue assessing eyes and no, tell me about you, how are you? and when we come home we take ourselves off the leash and pick and tear and the dismay creaks in our throats because we do still bleed, even when we've lowered our body temperature to ice. It's exhausting. It would be good to stop. It would be so, so good to stop. But please you have to believe me that there is a day when I will scrape off the scab and all that will be left underneath is a shiny scar, flawless as glass, the color of skim milk. And then it will be over, and then I will have a story to tell, and then we will drink something delicious that almost burns and we will laugh so hard at the shit we did when we were younger and foolish, once it is a scar it is a story and once it is a story it is a shield, a clear, good laugh. I promise I'm getting there. I'm sorry it takes so long.
the end of the cotthut
Eleven years ago I bought a cottage here, it's kind of part of the Czech lifestyle and I was married to a Czech so it seemed appropriate. I liked the idea of being outside without running water or electricity on the weekends, just to re-set and to forcibly relax. In about 2010 it stopped being fun to go there, and the marriage fell apart shortly afterwards for the same reasons, and so I hadn't been there in over five years. Friar recently realized that he wasn't having fun there either, and last week he handed me back the keys. I went out and while WOW a lot can break and tumble down in five years, it's still a pretty magical place. I was really excited about starting fresh — new walks in the forest, barbeque, sitting in the sun reading a book or cozying up in the winter at the stove, reading by candlelight. Very sweet picture.
And then the neighbors pulled up. And they are toxic like … it's a very specific kind of poison, to which I am particularly vulnerable: the bully. I am immune to iocane powder and most forms of stupid but my life will never be long enough to spend time with a condescending know-it-all bully. And this particular bully feels that since he would like to have the property, he should have it. Like: it just should be his. Why? Because you're stupid.
So there are lots of details, including that there had been a certain amount of vandalism on the property that was probably him, but the bottom line is this: I'm not keeping the cottage. Selling it to the neighbors and getting the hell out of there before he takes it into his head to burn it down or whatever. I'm really sad, because I hate it when my fantasies die before I can even fully breathe life into them. But I know I'm right. And I know that there are so many things in life, horrible things, that you can't walk away from, but when you can, you really really should.
August by Barbara Crooker
Summer sings its long song, and all the notes are green.
But there's a click, somewhere in the middle
of the month, as we reach the turning point, the apex,
a Ferris wheel, cars tipping and tilting over the top,
and we see September up ahead, school and schedules
returning. And there's the first night you step outside
and hear the katydids arguing, six more weeks
to frost, and you know you can make it through to fall.
Dark now at eight, nights finally cooling off for sleep,
no more twisting in damp sheets, hearing mosquitoes'
thirsty whines. Lakes of chicory and Queen Anne's lace
mirror the sky's high cirrus. Evenings grow chilly,
time for old sweaters and sweatpants, lying in the hammock
squinting to read in the quick-coming dusk.
A few fireflies punctuate the night's black text,
and the moonlight is so thick, you could swim in it
until you reach the other side.
Seuss
Our cat died this morning. She was sixteen. I have had cats my whole life and this is the second one that I didn't love. The first one went to live with my boyfriend's grandfather after six months of us vexing each other. This cat, though, was acquired partly because I wanted my son to grow up in knowledge of caring for something smaller and weaker, so sending it off to live on a farm wasn't an option. And she didn't vex me so much as she just never took my heart. She was sick in the beginning and suicidal through most of the middle, and though I made her flashcards explaining about how she only got nine lives she continued to jump out the apartment window whenever she got the chance. Possibly I never loved her because I never expected her to stick around for long. I felt bad about it sometimes, not loving this creature who lived with us, but certainly my son loved her and she was fed and petted and brushed.
We were gone for the summer and five different people took care of her, with five different ideas of how a cat should be cared for. I'm sure that was a factor. But she had been toothless for seven years and always had one thing or another going on with her fur or her digestion, and she was eighty years old in cat years. We came home to a cat that was clearly not long for the world. She licked food off of my fingers for the first day but then even that didn't interest her.
She didn't seem to be in pain; she purred when she was petted and she mewed when she was uncomfortable but mostly she slept on my chest or in my suitcase (a previous battleground, but I decided she could have it this time). I watched her slipping away this past week. I thought I would see if I could let her go naturally, without euthanasia, although I am a big fan of choosing not to suffer needlessly. But it didn't seem like she was suffering. I am incredibly privileged to work from home and be able to spend most of my day checking on a cat every hour to see if she wants to lick water off my fingers or be carried to the cat box, so that's what I did. And somewhere between one hour and the next this morning, she died.
I did not love her. But I did care for her. I hope I have resolved that within myself. I'm not sure she knew or cared, as long as I fed her. She was a quintessential cat in that regard.
reverof enog
Dear Sissy,
I guess you figured out by now that I ain't coming back, which means you're in charge now. The good news is I ain't dead, which anybody with half a brain could have figured but clearly neither Pa nor that poet have half a brain, so I have a clean getaway behind me. I've been saving pennies for years and I aim to go upriver and stake my own claim. There's no point in waiting for Pa to get off his duff and do a thing towards providing for us, and there's better work than selling duck eggs, plus I have a business mind I plan to put to use for myself.
Pa's okay for living with if you feed him a good duck egg and some biscuits in the morning and then try to stay out of the way at night if he's been drinking which as you know is sadly often the case. I'm sorry I can't be there for you now but you're old enough to take care of yourself. If he finds gold… ha ha I make myself laugh. Just take care of the ducks, sell the eggs when you can, and you'll scrape by a while longer I expect. At least you got small feet so you can get shoes.
You can have that dumb poet guy, if you want him. It seems like you've been looking at him plenty. Let me warn you though: that kind is only writing to keep his hands from touching himself. The only person he loves is himself, so all the words he writes about loving anybody is really about the ways he loves his own words pouring out of his own mouth and filling up his own ears. He don't love me and he won't love you neither, and poets can't really provide much which is why I'm getting out of here.
If you want to find me I'll be mining under the name Clement Innes. Don't tell nobody I'm alive or I'll disappear again, forever. I'm dreadful sorry to leave you but I can't stay here with all this stupid for one more day. Good luck, Sissy.
Questions (so far)
Is love blind?
Compare: someone who is afraid they cannot love others vs. someone who is afraid they cannot be loved.
If you're invited to a party and have nothing appropriate to wear with you, what do you do?
What is the difference between arts and crafts? Between art and craft?
Can you change a habit for someone else? Would you?
Is this best you can possibly be? Why or why not?
hello. hello. hello.
My sister has a bird, a parrot, that was rescued from some old dude who wasn't really able to take care of it. Otis is an absolute beauty and quite gentlemanly in many ways. He has a collection of phrases from his previous owner, and sometimes we talk to him in that voice, as if it were his voice, Otis's, though of course we don't know what that would sound like. Otis is a bird, with a bird-sized brain, but because he can talk, it sometimes seems like he's really quite smart, smart enough to mess with you.
Like sometimes he makes the sound of the dishwasher being done when it hasn't even completed a cycle, and I come running to be a good houseguest for nothing; I think he likes the scurrying. And sometimes he uses my sister's or brother-in-law's voices to call out "hello" as though they have just come home and I get all happy because that means it's cocktail time except Otis doesn't drink and they won't be home for two more hours. Pavlov's parrot or something, this one.
Or like I sit down to work and Otis asks me "Whatcha doing? Whatcha doing?!" and I tell him I am working. And he asks and I answer until it seems existential, until I am almost crying about it, because I am sitting here in beautiful sunny California, there is a swingset in the backyard, there are rivers to raft in, and I am… well, Otis, I am working. Which is the right thing to do, but if you say it enough it can sound wrong.
So I am working. I am also taking some time for myself: I have been wine tasting; I have driven over the border into Nevada to win $60 on a $1 slot machine and walked away; I have eaten until all I can fit in are cotton pants with an elastic waist, and then I have heaved a giant sigh of relief and eaten more. I have been complimented on my "look" by a stranger and have in parallel noted with pleasure my increasing invisibility in the patriarchy. I have celebrated birthdays and anniversaries. I have mourned the deaths of 49 people I did not know and one who I did. I have visited some friends and will visit more. I have laughed until I cried, which is usual for me, and cried until I laughed, which is new and interesting. I have debated whether love makes us blind (I believe it does not). I have been flooded with memories of previous times I was here, previous longings and disappointments and delights.
I have not told Otis everything I am doing. I probably shouldn't tell you, either.
tuckova 