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

L’esprit de l’escalier

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Mind and Body pass each other on the stairs. Mind pauses, a little winded, well not really because Mind doesn't breathe, that's more Body's thing, but anyway. Mind wants to have a look around, a reflective moment. Mind says: Hey be careful down there. Body just looks back at Mind wordlessly; Body doesn't talk much. 

Mind says: Down there? Where I was? It's crazy. I was so innocent. I didn't have any perspective. Like from here I can look down and see where I've been? But down there, I couldn't. Body nods and looks down the stairs, and thinks of falling. Body looks up the stairs, where Mind is going, remembering. Body knows that it used to be able to touch its head with its foot in two or three different directions. Body did ballet, Body was graceful and flexible. Body had all the time in the world.

Mind says: I used to think I was nothing, you know? And anybody who told me that I was nothing, I thought they were smart for seeing the truth. I used to think it was important that I was smart, and tried so hard to be clever and witty and knowledgeable, and if anybody said I was stupid it crushed me. Body is thinking about dancing, the crush of bodies, sweaty limbs tangled. Crushed in someone's arms. It's been a while, but Body remembers. Body knows this is not the kind of being crushed that Mind is talking about. Mind says: I was crushed, as if the external validation of my intellect was more important than the thoughts I had. Hey are you listening? Body is thinking about being crushed at the foot of the stairs, which seems more probable.

Mind says: It's very interesting at this point on the stairs, you know, in the middle. Where I can see how far I've gone and how far I have to go. I used to think back a few stairs ago that I had the best perspective but now I know that this is the best. Now I can see things clearly. Mind says: I used to stumble around at the bottom because I couldn't even see to the top, I thought I could but I couldn't, but now I can see everything, I'm sure. Body sees a lot too, and also knows that some of the stairs are longer than others, that Body took a stair's length for granted recently and fell, bruised, weeping. Body sees that it can't count on itself anymore, that Body is no longer graceful and flexible, and there are stairs ahead that creak and groan even more than Body's knees do, these days, and Body is a little afraid about that.

Mind says: Well anyway nice talking at you. Miles to go and whatnot. Mind is exceedingly cheerful. Mind thinks it can go miles. Body nods, numbly, grips the banister, slides out a cautious toe. Takes the next step. 

no pain no pain

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Oh, geez, I know! It just flies sometimes, and then there you are looking at the same blog post for two weeks, wondering if it's about you, and there's been nothing to distract you. Poor duck.

The sun is shining today, so even though it is brutally cold I am disinclined to kill anybody. SO FAR. 

I've been getting a massage at least once a month this year, trying to find the best massage in Brno. Mostly I book them through slevomat, which is like groupon, figuring that even if it's not great at least it's cheap. And sometimes that means it's not great — I've had some lame skin massages (like: nice? but… it's not my skin that hurts). I've listened to a lot of plinky-plunky music, including the Benedictine monks singing Metalica (or something like that) and Hawaiian Christian music. It's always the fusion music that has me in giggles, and the massage person is all, "Does it tickle?" and I'm "No, no, not at all, huffle snort." Some people are pretty strict about their time but not mine (one woman who didn't know I was in the waiting room so started about 10 min late but finished on time, welcome to non-repeating business). I've had some good ones that I went back to who were… not as good, which is weird because I'd expect your work to be better for somebody paying full price, but my experience hasn't supported that.

Today I had a guy who was mostly blind, and I think he may have been an actual sadist, because WHOA it hurt. It hurt so much that I, Anne, lover of moderate pain, was nearly off the board twice, and not by conscious movement, but by an instinctive need to get away from YEOUCH. To add to the comedy potential of flipping over a massage table, my response to pain is often to laugh, and so there we were, naked American on a table alternately laughing and mewling, and blind man in a white suit, laughing maniacally as he drove his thumb straight through my iliotibial band and into my thigh bone, and I would have said to stop except I couldn't stop clenching my teeth and finally the pain melted and my foot went to sleep for about 10 seconds and then everything felt fine. Four hours later and I'm still figuring out what he did, exactly — everything feels sore and quite fabulous. $15 massage, my friends. 

Anyway so that's how I've been. And super busy with work. See if I'd had more time I might have written something about laughing at pain, but today is not that day.

horses for the poor

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I used to wish I were smaller, less physically present, that my giant brain could then be a surprise. "What a firecracker!" Well I don't want that but I did. I still wish that I could be lighter; I wish that I were not held to this place by simple natural forces like gravity and habit.
I wish I could be all the places I want, that I could spend summers in the beer gardens and winters on a beach, that the sun would always warm me and be appreciated by me without needing to go away to remind me of my needs. I wish that warmth could be a default instead of a luxury. I wish I could explore the mystery of freckles and never be sunburned. I wish that when I fell into bed at night I would still feel the salt of sweat or the sea against my skin and it would be enough; I wouldn't feel like I wished someone could hold me.
We use the past tense to express things that are impossible. See how I can follow the rules even when I say absurd things like that, or like this.
I wish that you loved me, wanted me. I wish that when your hands grazed your body like maybe accidentally in the shower or whatever, that in that moment you imagined that they were mine and let them linger. I wish that you woke with my name in your mouth, your mouth like cut fruit forming itself around the sound, and it would be real because you said it aloud.
I wish that you felt like this. 

The Rain by Robert Creeley

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All night the sound had   
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,   
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,   
even the hardness,   
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,   
something not so insistent—
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,   
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,   
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

commANNEdments

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Thou shalt not read before you any comment, or any likeness of a comment that is on YouTube with the thumbs up, or that is to any news story beneath, or that is in boxes under the entertainment websites, even though they be Salon and thinkest thou that it is a fine idea. Thou shalt not suffer to cast thine eyes upon them, nor reply to them: for I AM YOUR PLAIN COMMON SENSE, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that waste their time on such stupid, stupid pursuits.

Thou shalt not argue with strangers in comment threads, nay not even the friends of friends on the book of faces, for verily every argument which is in a comment thread is both a ruination of the original post and a waste of thine own time, and thou knowest better.

Thou shalt not open the emails late at night from those that annoyest thou, for thou hast made clear that one does not suffer fools gladly; therefore let not thyself be the biggest fool.

moving the goalposts

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Ten minutes and then I have to go. I've had my shower, eaten, broken a glass and cut my leg and foot with shards, swept up most of it. Still need to dress, find pens and paper. I'm going to a quiz tonight. I used to really like going to quizzes but some of the social aspects ceased to be fun and I had to quit because life is too short to do things that aren't fun. I'm still not sure if it's good for me to be in crowds, even when we are organized to a purpose which sometimes makes it easier for me. It's just too many faces, smells, ideas, people I have to think about and think about being. 

I spent a great deal of my life creating it in such a way that it makes me happy and comfortable. Making the house nice, throwing out things I don't like, collecting things that please me. Only pursuing friendships that make me happy and letting the others drift. Finding jobs that have purpose and turning down work that feels pointless or wrong. It's hard to walk away from things that I CAN do but it is harder to curl in a ball of exhaustion at the end of the day, and ugly spaces and mean people and stupid work exhaust me, even when I can manage them all. 

So now I feel like: Ok, I know what I need to avoid. And I am right that one should not do things that are not fun. But I still have maybe another 20 years to go and is this it? It is unlikely that I have found all the things that I DO like. So I try, stretch, reflect whether I've drawn my categories too broadly, like is it true that I don't like crowds or maybe I just don't like THAT crowd. I want to challenge myself to keep trying to be better at the game of being me. 

****

I went. There were dogs, yappy and fighting with each other, barking and echoing off the walls, and people walking around slamming the back of my chair, and a person with a microphone calling out thirty seconds, fifteen seconds, ten seconds, and I couldn't speak or even hear my own thoughts clearly. I think maybe I need to give up on being a quiz person. Sniff.

kiss my aspirations

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Did you see the movie Moonstruck? Cher and Nicholas Cage. I remember very little of it, but there was a scene when an older man, distinguished university professor type, was out to dinner with a young woman who threw her drink in his face and stormed out. Olympia Dukakis* was watching and they started talking, she and the man. They were the same age, a little intellectual sparring, if I remember correctly, and he asks her to have an affair with him. It would have been a step forward for him, initiating a relationship with an equal, not some pretty young thing but someone who could challenge him without resorting to theatrics. And she refused. Why? he asked.

Because I know who I am.

And I thought: Oh, how much I would like to be there. To know myself so much that I don't have to save anybody. It seemed sort of impossible. At the time I was nineteen and very much in love with someone who told me at regular intervals that he didn't love me but seemed unable to let me go if it meant losing my friendship. Instead of breaking my heart in a good clean way he tapped away at it at intervals, breaking off slivers, until it was small enough I could hold it on the palm of my hand and even then I kept offering it to him every time he asked to see it. I could not imagine a future in which he would not be eventually redeemed by my love, I could not imagine a world in which knowing myself would come ahead of this consuming desire to love and to be loved.

And yet here I am, years later, and I have loved since then, have loved as much (though not as hopelessly, I think) and yet every year I have come closer to accurately seeing the situation so that I can walk away from just about anything that looks like it's going to hurt. And now to the point where I can even sit down at the table where water has been thrown, have a pleasant conversation if it seems like a good idea, and still walk away when it's time, even if it hurts a bit, because I know who I am.

Finally.

*trivia: I voted for Dukakis and even worked on his campaign because I figured anybody related to Olympia Dukakis had to be decent, silly military photo op or no.

bang bang

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I am tired of "trigger warning" and "spoiler alert". I understand that they're meant to function as a courtesy and I generally applaud all such efforts, but I think they're massively overused AND this week I saw some people reprimanded for NOT using them, and I think we have officially landed on ridiculous. Let me explain.

A trigger warning is a warning that a text you are about to read may create upsetting feelings, particularly if you have experienced something similar to the upsetting thing that the text is about. For example, a trigger warning on a text about rape helps people know that the text might upset them, especially if they were raped.  And while I get the courtesy that is intended by that warning, I also feel like: guess what? Women get raped so often, so brutally, and so casually that what is remarkable is not when it makes the news (trigger warning! woman raped!) but that it still makes the news at all. Trigger warning! Patriarchy! News at 11! Understand that I don't think that the sort of violence that we put these warning tags on is acceptable; it's just that I think we live in a world where this is endemic and my concern is more the idea that some people require a warning and the rest of us are okay, or that the text is more upsetting than the event it describes. Everyone should find it horrible; it IS horrible. You know who didn't get a trigger warning? The people in the story. More importantly, the implication that victims of violence and terror are somehow going to be protected from the knowledge of a fact they lived through by a little red flag at the beginning is ridiculous. If you do not want to live in a world where the news is upsetting to you, then try avoiding the news and links to news stories, or you might try channeling that horror into working to change things, instead of getting angry at people who have failed to warn you.

A spoiler alert is a warning that you are about to read key plot points from a work of fiction that will change the way you interpret it. If you are a person who consumes fiction purely for the what of the plot, I guess I can see how you might want to avoid knowing what will happen ahead of time, but… who does that? Do we not usually enjoy fiction for the how, the who, and the why? One of the highest grossing films of all time was set on the Titanic (spoiler alert! it sinks!). I GET that it is a pleasurable jolt when there is a plot twist you hadn't expected, or after the shock of seeing a main character killed off unexpectedly, but since the way we communicate now guarantees that there are fewer such surprises (like interviews with actors who are leaving a show being broadcast before their character disappears), most good artists have compensated by making how you get to those plot twists more interesting. If you are unwilling to live in a world where the plot points of television shows and popular novels may be revealed to you before you see them yourself, and this will ruin the pleasure of the show for you, then you need to either get off the internet or consume better media. I'll be over here re-reading the Chronicles of Prydain and re-watching The Princess Bride. 

 

still believe

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OKAY 10 MINUTES GO.

I went to see a show last night (singer-songwriter cafe type of thing). The singer is a friend, I guess we're friends at this point. He helped me through a particularly bad patch in my life, gave me some personal insight and clarity over two cups of coffee, and I think it was not a big deal to him but it was to me. So I go to his shows, clap till my hands hurt, sing along when he asks for it, dance. Try to bring new people. He's good, a showman, funny. And last night he had a drummer, box drum, which was great.

I had some thoughts at the show last night:
 
What do I think of people who clap with a song? Or pound the table, stamp their feet, sing along with the words they know, dance in their seats? I tend to think that those people are annoying. I tend to think, I came to see and hear HIM, not YOU. I tend to think it's attention-grabby and annoying. And yet I did dance last night, to the last song, got up and did the twist, and it was fun. So what does that mean?
I so like observational poetry (can I call it that?); Frank O'Hara seems to me so clean and beautiful, and yet I often feel like songwriters are stuck in a "write what you know" rut where what they know is… I don't know, it feels uncomfortable in a way I think it shouldn't. "Tom's Diner" is a perfect example of the sort of song I mean, except that it doesn't bother me the way that, say, "You're Beautiful" does (I was on the subway and I saw a pretty girl with another guy. THE END. Seriously?). So what makes the line between a simple and lovely observation and a trite one?
Why is it that when I so value originality, there are few things as guaranteed to delight me as a clever cover? Cake's "I Will Survive", the tragic, pathos-laden cover of  "I Kissed a Girl", or Chris's cover of "…One More Time", goosebumps and a grin every time.
AND: SCENE.

you’re good to go

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A long time ago, we used to be friends

Well what is a long time ago? Less than half a lifetime. How we talked late into the night, stretched beside each other or whispering into the phone, or email with its glorious disregard for time and time zones. A friendship that ended and started and ended and started, each time sweeter, each time like finding something I'd given up as lost, my silver necklace returned to me on the tide, the sparkle through the water, the glint and hope and the waves pulling back to reveal what is more precious for having been lost.

But I haven't thought of you lately at all

This is a fallacy, since obviously I'm writing about you so I am thinking of you, lately. The late you, reverof enog. I think of you when you occur to me: hear you sooner or later on every eighties station, the smell of almonds from a roadside stand, hotel soap, the particular taste of coffee in the morning of a day that is not yet hot, but will be.  

If ever again a greeting I send to you

Don't worry I won't, though your birthday comes and goes and my lips itch with what I want to say, the words that would unlock you, the key I could pass with a kiss. The only way to get blood from a stone is to cut your hands on it and my hands have scars enough. I have been one to hang about graveyards, rubbing my name off the grave, pressing forehead to headstone, but those days are gone. I only visit what I've buried in my heart, now. The dead don't know you're there, anyway, and there's no point in talking to them unless you're asking them to keep a secret, and you already have mine.

Short and sweet to the soul I intend

And what would I say, anyway? That I loved you then and still? You knew it then and probably now, too, if you think of me where you are; I remain consistent. I said run away with me then and I meant it, but if you had said yes we wouldn't have been running away together, we would have been running away from home, badly packed suitcases thumping against our scabbed knees, and every time I thought of it the suitcases became heavier and filled with more abstractions: partner, child, mortgage, responsibility. Finally they couldn't be lifted at all and it became almost impossible for you to even talk to me until almost was perfectly.  

Come on now honey

Oh never mind I get it. All I ever have wanted to be was good and I am still practicing. It's just the times when someone puts their pillows in the window for the morning sun to freshen them, every time I use that bottle opener we bought for the wine, the afternoons when I want to use words like malinger and find I have nobody around to say them to, the way your neck smells just below your ear, how it feels to walk down the middle of the street at night, like when we were rockstars, remember me when.