I am definitely having a damn humans get off my planet kind of week.

First
of all, problems with the computer, which, if you know me, you know that is Not Good. I concede that my relationship with the internet is a little like an addiction, except that I think junkies go through withdrawal more pleasantly. I must also add in my increasingly
shrill voice that I Need It For Work. Listen, YOU try editing a paper
about the isolation of ligands in a single step gradient elution without
the internet. I need it first so I can find out what ligand field theory
is, and second so I can rest my eyes on that pretty Gotye video.

Second, I went to the equivalent of a book group meeting on the "What
About the Mens?!" article in the increasingly tree-wasting Atlantic
Monthly. Being a feminist is a lot like being an American, I am
realizing. You spend a lot of time splaining how things are not what
people think they are, and trying to get people to see both your own actual point of
view and further how other people in the group might have their points of view, etc., and
well mainly my conclusion is that a body cannot consume enough alcohol
to make the conversation go quickly enough. I did agree with the article
insofar as yes, it is neat how the ladies have been given the vote and
now even upgraded to second-class citizens, that sure is exciting
progress. Then the next day I went to Czech class and the
twenty-something teacher, you know, the beneficiary of the hard work of
my generation, made a rape joke and I am not entirely convinced I ought
not live in a cave somewhere.

Third, I have some massive issues with Other Parents. It is to do
with striking the balance between making sure your child knows about
unconditional love, and making sure your child does not expect the rest
of the world to give it. I maybe cannot explain it well. It is a thing I
think about a lot, the desire to armor your child for the world and the
desire to require them to forge their own armor. I feel like the parents who work hard for
their children to be cool, or have happy childhoods, or never worry
about adult problems, are in a way not helping the children or society
as a whole.

Basically this week I am thinking with great longing towards my future
in a nursing home for Victorian feminists, where I will needlepoint cushions that say IBtP. I hope they have a good
internet connection.

The paper I'm working on today is about "The Circle of Willis" which is a
real name for a real part of the brain. I keep muttering at the paper
"Whatchoooo talking 'bout?" but it does not answer me. Perhaps neurology
was not the field to pursue as a medical editor. Although, really, not
like I could do gynecology or anything else with greater ease, because I
am always able to find something that will make me laugh too hard to do
anything reasonable, like work. I mean, GONADS. You keep a straight face.

I find that I am taking my friend's recent death rather harder than I expected. I'm
taking it personally. I don't remember feeling that way before; most
people I loved who died were in pain, and so my selfish wishes to have
them around forever and ever were somewhat contained by the knowledge
that I did not want them to suffer anymore. This may be the first one
that doesn't feel that way. Maybe it's intimations of mortality, though I
really think it's not about my own death so much as the honest and absolute amount of loss I
feel with this one.

I really, really, really do not want to hear "Hallelujah" ever again. I
loved the song to pieces (the Cale version, as all discerning people
agree), and I'm not sure why it bothers me so particularly (I'm still
pretty happy to hear ABBA, and goodness knows that's overplayed to
bits), but it does. It makes me feel like when people play "Wrapped
Around Your Finger" at weddings. The song means something to me, and it
is not romantic or sweet, and every time it comes swooping onto a
soundtrack I think, "Oh, a complicated emotional scene, let's have that
complicated emotional song do the work for us" and yet I don't think
anybody's listening to the same words I am. And I am so fed up that I
would fast forward through movies, I would walk out of a store that played it, just to not have to hear it
again.

I haven't been to the cottage in WEEKS. Friar's been every weekend, so I know it's
still standing, but I feel like some of the joy has been punched out of
it by my annoyance with the neighbors. Well, I'm just going to get a
sour stomach thinking about that. NEXT!

I'm working for a new guy, a chemist, who advised me to take a valium before I edit his paper. That bodes well, doesn't it?

Squire seems to be doing well in school so far. He's so tall, it would
blow you away. We almost see eye to eye now. HA. He is honestly just a kick
to live with, so funny and so honest and so goofy. And the
self-awareness that has come with being older is also nice, like now he
can talk for five minutes about starships and weapons, but after five
minutes he says, "I'm kind of boring you, right?" YES YOU ARE. But he
knows he is adorable even when he's boring, and also doesn't hesitate to
tell me when I'm boring him, so there's that. Every year I think: This
is so much better than I ever expected having a kid to be, this is a
large as my heart has ever been, and it is okay if it is all downhill
from here because right now I am already happier and more loving than I
thought I could be. And then the next year I am blown away by how much
MORE love I feel, how much more I like him as a person. But really, if
he descends into the sassiest, most unpleasant adolescence after this, I
will not care, because he is just a goddamn delight right now. I am a
better person, and perceive the world as a better place, because he's in
it. True story.

Remember the time we raced elevators in Kokura?
After 11 p.m. the elevators in my building would stop at every floor, and it
seemed to us that surely one elevator was faster than the other, so we got into
them and raced, and about halfway down some poor couple got onto my elevator,
while we were giving the play-by-play (I'm
on the fifth floor now and the doors are closing!!) and there I was pressed
to the wall, shouting to you, Please you
have to keep talking to me. Because I was clearly crazier than any
foreigner ever, except of course the guy in the other elevator shouting back at
me I'm winning, I'm winning!

Remember how my boyfriend at the time tried to get you to side against me in a
macho way, how GUYS were into this and that's why I wasn't, and you said,
"Yeah, I remember going through that stage?" You were the most likely
to side with the testosterone of any man I've ever known, but you stood beside
me then. Staunch.

Remember when we went to that baseball game and I confessed that I really knew
nothing about baseball, and you honestly started explaining that well, there are two teams…
And I thought, He couldn't possibly
think I am THAT stupid! And then years later realized that you had in
fact thought I was that stupid as far as baseball was concerned, and
liked me anyway.

Do you remember when we laughed so hard we had to sit down on the sidewalk so
we wouldn't keel over?

I touched you once in 20 years, I put my hands on your shoulders, and you sat
very still then. But when I tried to kiss you, you pulled away, because we were
friends first and always. Did I ever hug you, even hello or goodbye? I don't
remember, but I think I didn't. We were both such prickly little beasts, and
disinclined to show the soft underbelly to anybody who might poke us in an
unfriendly way.

We wrote letters at first and I always wanted to be my very most
entertaining
for you. I would sit at a dark table in the nearest bar and buy a bottle
of red
wine and write pages and pages to you until the bottle was empty. And
the
letters from you, torn from notebooks, written on the backs of fliers,
long
screeds alternating fury and humor, dancing on that line that I could
barely
walk without falling.

The internet made things easier. Remember how we
would chat for
three hours every Saturday, telling secrets, looking at pictures of art,
movie previews, anything. Listening to Portishead together, looking for
the best picture
of Ava Gardner, the perfect combination of beauty and dissolution. You
were
closer to me than if you'd been in the room.

Remember when we fought because you said I liked old lady television and I said
you loved your mother too much and we didn't talk for a year? What a waste. You
could curse me under the table, and did, and you were harsh as sandpaper. But
for your mother – it was weird what a little boy you became, so deferential.
And now I will write to her and tell her how much you loved her, which is the closest
I can be to sorry.

All these memories. What am I going to do
with this if you’re not here to remember it with me? And the last time we
talked it was just nothing, it was about the weather, it was hot and sticky
where you were and I don’t even know if I made a good enough joke, if the last
thing you remembered about me was laughing. I hope so. Goddamn it.

I got tagged in that "15 albums that are super important to you forevers
in only 15 minutes go!" thing on the book of face, and I did it, and
then I thought: But lists are not interesting; reasons are. So.

1. Starland
   Vocal Band – I bought this for my father the summer it came out,
   because it was popular and I thought he would like it. I played this
   album until the grooves were worn smooth. I studied the picture of the
   band, tried to figure out what they were like, invented back stories
   for them. I know now that it was mostly lame covers of classic folk
   songs, but gosh I loved this album, and it was the first album I loved.
2. Simon
   & Garfunkel – I couldn't tell you which single album, maybe
   "Sounds of Silence", with their pointy shoes and capey looking coats
   and their mysterious destination down a country road. We didn't have a
   lot of music in the house when I was growing up, but we had all the
   Simon and Garfunkel, and I loved it all. Writing out the words, lying
   on my back crying beside the stereo, because "gazing beyond the
   rain-drenched streets" was so lovely. This is why I am demanding about
   lyrics; you cannot start with Paul Simon and settle for mere rhymes
   after. 
3. Eurythmics – Again, I don't know which album, maybe
   "Sweet Dreams". This was the beginning of liking pop music for me,
   liking costumes, liking how you could build a shell around your heart
   instead of holding it out on your open palm, like you do with folk
   music. And I liked how her voice was so controlled and so powerful. And
   her hair.
4. Prince's Purple Rain – I realize that there are movie soundtracks that affect people more (you know who you are, The Wall)
   but this was the one that won my heart. The dancing purple q-tip! I
   loved him, despite those embarrassingly long guitar solos, gah. And I
   could still listen to most of this today, and dance.
5. Kate
   Bush's The Dreaming – First album that was hard for me to like before I
   knew I loved it. It was such an interesting cross between the easy
   folky appeal of "The Kick Inside" and the harder rock that I was
   learning about (Pink Floyd, King Crimson) but I knew that whether Kate
   Bush crooned or screamed, she absolutely meant it, and it was a lovely
   channel for how I felt at seventeen, angry and anguished.
6. Talking
   Heads'  Fear of Music – (I think? I tend to like an artist, get
   everything they've done, and listen to it all in a long, lovely
   gluttonous loop, so I don't generally focus on albums). David Byrne
   changed my brain. I don't really think I can say much more about it.
7. Laurie
   Anderson's Strange Angels – Her previous albums had a much bigger
   influence on my ideas about the world and about what stories we tell
   and how we tell them. Those were game changers for me. But Strange
   Angels… this had a huge influence on my feelings. And still does;
   Coolsville can still make me cry faster than I can blink.
8. Leonard
   Cohen's I'm Your Man. I had read his poetry in high school, and when I
   first heard his music I was like: This guy can only sing one note,
   hello. And I hated (and still don't like) how he brings in pretty
   sopranos to cover it up. I like him best raw. But coming back to him in
   college, falling in love with Suzanne as one does, and then with "Take
   This Waltz" I think he had me forever in his pocket.
9. Eno/Cale
   Wrong Way Up – This album has super powers. If I ever talk about dying,
   make me listen to it. I cannot leave a world where this album exists.
10. Tori
    Amos' Little Earthquakes – Oh, the tragic breakup album. This is maybe
    a little awkward, now, my love for this album. But gosh, that was a
    hard break up, and Tori knew all the words.
11. Counting Crows's
    August and Everything After – This was one of maybe five tapes I had
    when I moved here. I have no objective idea at this point if it's any
    good. I think it is really really good. But it was the only actual
    album I had for several months, and I am intimately bonded with it
    forever.
12. Beth Orton's Central Reservation – Great lyrics, great
    swoopy music, heartbreakingly good voice. I like, too, how optimistic
    this is, because I think she could easily be very yeasty. I like also
    how her crossover tends to be towards electronica. It was a new way of
    thinking for me, and I like anything that opens doors in my brain.
13. Jaromir
    Nohavica Darmodej – I remember very clearly the first time I heard
    this album; it is when I knew I was going to stay here for a long time.
    If a country can produce this man, then it is a country worth living
    in.
14. Regina Spektor's Begin to Hope – Like Beth Orton, Spektor
    just intrigues me with her ability to do a lot of stuff and her quiet
    refusal to be easily pigeonholed. The match of lyrics to music is
    surprising and often delightful to me. Plus her voice is just crazy
    awesome. 
15. There should be a place for mix tapes. It would be
    wrong of me to put any album ahead of mix tapes, because whenever I
    want to hear music, my brain first goes to mixes, the sonnets of my
    generation, my musical touchstones.

The book I am reading (A Gate at the Stairs) is a mystery to me. It is good but I am more than halfway through and I do not really understand a single character. I blame the author, who doesn't seem to want to pin anything down either. There are really truly sentences like "the room was the pale yellow of wheat, like chablis". Listen: the room is pale yellow, or wheat-colored, or the color of chablis, but why couldn't she pick and I am exhausted and the room never gets mentioned again so who cares.

There are these five sentences, quotes from various writers, that I've saved in my "drafts" file and I keep reading them over and over again and I always feel like I'm on the verge of learning it but then I don't.

There is a "Kids in the Hall" sketch (I think) where Scott Thompson (I think?) is supposed to be some awesome author reading aloud from his upcoming brilliant second novel and he goes "write what you know, write what you know, write what you know, I don't know anything." Let me tell you the second book is not at all like that. Or is it. It is. Every day this week will be writing, writing, writing, or I will really be forced to write something closer to the bone, and we none of us want to see that. Scott Thompson totally pwned P.J. O'Rourke and I will love him forever for it.

The man with two first names brought a rattleskin back from his recent stateside visit. I, who had a childhood in one kind of nature, and then remember watching rattlesnakes sunning themselves on the fraught walks of my adolescence, down to Angsty Hoffman park and back, shook the rattle out into my hand and screamed because I thought it was alive. No matter how much country I'm coated in, I'm a city girl on the inside. I could sleep in a museum in an instant but I've never liked tents as much as I've been in them.

These summer days, sudden storms and sunshine, so hard to plan and surprising. It is unsafe for laundry. Today I told the pizza guy downstairs that he'd been written up positively on a local wesite, which he didn't know. I am neighborly. But I haven't been to the beer garden yet.

Dear mustard, I am sorry that I forgot what you gave me was what I want.
A sweet and sour bite, a slap on the tongue, a reminder of other
flavors. I have drowned myself in vinegar and salt when you were what I
wanted. Colonel Mustard, in the kitchen, with the knife.

I am perplexed by my neighborhood. Within a three block radius of the
apartment, there are four food stands (pizza, kebabs, fried cheese), two
flower stores, two pet supply stores and two pet grooming stores, ten
pubs and a wine bar, and three hairdressers. There are no vegetable
stands (six blocks), no clothing stores (five blocks), no drug store
(four blocks), bookstore, school supplies… I'm not saying I have to
walk far for what I want, but isn't it ODD to have so many of one kind
of thing and so few or none of the other.

Despite the presence of three hairdressers, I've had a hell of a streak
of bad luck with haircuts (for a while, this blog was on the front page
for "bad haircut"), and thus have for the last three years taken care of
my hair by clippering it down to about a centimeter every few months.
I'd rather have a bad haircut for free, thanks. The few times I've felt
brave enough to try and make an appointment, they've been willing to see
me in a week, by which time my braveness evaporated and I just went
ahead and cut my hair. But yesterday the planets aligned, I walked in,
they agreed to let me come back within 24 hours, and I got my hair cut.
It was fast and I think it looks good, and she did it to my
specifications (rather than what often happens: they mistake me for
somebody who cares). So yay.

I've been thinking about secrets or maybe privacy, because what is a
secret anyway? Why don't you tell them; why don't I? Why, when taking a
running jump at talking about it, do I find myself unable, tongue-tied
by myself. Do I not say it because I don't want it to be true. Or some
sense of shame, maybe. Or because I don't feel like having the
discussion that I expect will come. It's definitely a fact that I don't
talk about stuff easily or ever till I've made my mind up what I think. I
think about myself as a person who doesn't have secrets, but what I
mean is if I'm going to tell you eventually I generally tell you
straight off, just to get it done. But in inventorying my too-narrow
curtains I've realized that there are things I've told nobody, or few; there are things I cannot say. So that is sort of interesting to me.