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

high school update: Let’s make a deal.

tuckova1 Comment

So the teaching one class a week at the art high school? Okay: the students are lovely, the work is not impossibly hard, and I’m over my terror
of teaching. Yay.

However, should I agree to take a teaching job ever
again, I would like you to handcuff me to a drainpipe and rub my face
with a pumice stone, because doing this so as to get good intel for
Squire is one thing, but under no circumstances should I get confused
and think I’m doing this because I love it more than I hate getting
dressed nice, putting on shoes, standing in line at the photocopy
store, and waiting for trams in the freezing rain.

bullets grazed my brain

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Things I’ve been thinking about but can’t seem to write a whole thing on:

  • I found what I believe is the first book I ever read to address
    the mutability of time, which is one of my top weaknesses. The book’s out of print, but the magic of the internets
    brought it to me. I read that book in the bathtub until it was
    literally falling apart,
    and when we moved to California I left it behind, which means I hadn’t seen it for nearly thirty years. It was really weirdly great to read it
    again and have whole sentences ring with familiarity in my head. The
    persistence of memory is another weakness of mine. I feel quite
    resonant.
  • The kids in Squire’s class have moved on to "faggot" as an
    insult. Is there no creativity in the world of ten years old or what.
    Talking to him about words and then I read this great Steven Pinker
    article, which makes me feel surrounded in a good way by the power of
    words. The concept of being
    able to fairly mock people for what they choose instead of what they can’t help doesn’t seem that
    complex and I don’t understand why it doesn’t get pursued more. I do
    understand that unfairness is part of the fun of bullying, but it seems
    like saying "don’t bully" isn’t terribly effective and maybe more clear
    rules about how to democratically make fun of people might be time
    better spent.
  • Squire has fully mastered the dirty look. It is really
    impressive; I finally taught it to him ("finally" meaning I was finally
    patient enough to push through his stubbornness and he was finally
    bored enough to try doing it my way) during a particularly dull train
    ride. Even though it’s my tutelage at work, I shrivel a little when I
    see it. It is extremely awesome. He also has a sympathy face that does
    not fail.
  • Presently there will be a rule in the house that people who buy
    food that is not on the grocery list and then do not mention the
    purchase and possible preparation of said food to the primary cook, nor
    (as secondary cook) do they themselves do anything with said food…
    well, not to put too lawyerly a spin on it, but those people are going
    to be force fed moldy mystery vegetable or something. Here’s what we
    currently have rotting in the fridge, none of which is my doing: a pot
    of …looks like it wanted to be chicken soup, a greenish thing that’s
    maybe in the eggplant family, a whiteish thing that looks like alien
    spawn, and corn on the cob, which I do not eat.
  • I found a picture of a man about whom I was once quite serious. He’s
    the vice president of his company now. I’m vaguely happy for him. I am
    more happy for myself that I am not with him, despite his meteoric rise
    to moderate heights, because he still looks like he borrowed his dad’s
    jacket and tie to get dressed up, which is a particularly unappealing
    look after 40. I hope he finally got a pet dog and that he either
    learned to kiss or found a girl who didn’t mind having her lips
    bruised; I hope he’s happy.
  • Friar and I were talking about condescension, which is not a
    deadly sin but should be. I’ve been told I’m arrogant prickly and some
    other stuff. I don’t know. I don’t work well with others for sure but
    that’s generally why I avoid others. If I’m hanging out with you, it’s
    probably because I like you. I really didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.
  • If you are my friend, I mean good friend, I will probably not
    like the person you date. This is in most cases not because the person
    is actually unlikeable, but because I do not think they are good enough
    for you. Perhaps at some later date we can discuss why it is that most
    of my friends like Friar, and some, including those who have not met
    him, will even go so far as to say I do not appreciate him enough.
    Compare and contrast. For the record he seems to think I appreciate him
    just fine. Of course I haven’t told him about the forcefeeding of the
    alien vegetable.

It was what it was. Wasn’t it?

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There were dozens of things I was going to do, crazy things and
sensible things. I was going to be a mover, driving people across the
country to start new lives, meeting people and bonding and then moving
on like a 70s television hero. Or I was going to own a small home near
the woods where I could touch the opposite walls with my fingertips and
be a mad hermit poet. Or I was going to be a ballet dancer, since what
else can you really do with perfect turnout.

Everything seemed probable. And everything still sort of
does; I could pick up at any minute and we would be sleeping in the
back of our moving van, or we more simply could move and live at the
cottage. The ballet dream is pretty much done. But I still could mostly do
what I had wanted to, except I think I don’t want it anymore.

The difference is that the life I have is also a life I
wanted, one of the possible trajectories from who I was then. I don’t
feel in any way like I betrayed my truck driving self by becoming an
editor, because I had an equal number of feature fantasies in which I
had a green visor and sleeve protectors. The costume changed, but the
dream I wanted was the same.

To
me, there is a web of lines emerging from every choice, and each choice
makes others possible. I don’t see it as having a choice, and that
choosing one thing is endlessly cutting off the other, because lines
can loop back; I don’t see Billy Pilgrim’s centipedes exactly either,
where everything past is linked to an inevitable now, but I also don’t
see a series of captured moments, unlinked. To me, you get to where you
are from where you were, and the lines can be traced no matter how
entangled, no matter if some snapped as you ran across.

And so I have trouble sometimes reconciling the person you’ve
become with the person I thought you were. I can’t see how you got to where you are from where you were back then. Perhaps my choice to stop
willfully charming people makes me as different from who I once was as
you seem now different to me. Or perhaps I’ve made smaller choices
slowly along the way, not even noticeable individually but cumulatively
changing me and it’s me who’s different and you’re moving on a consistent path.
I don’t know. I do know that it’s strange to look across a table and
see the eyes I once knew looking at things I don’t really understand;
the mouth I once knew forming words I never thought I’d hear, not while
sitting with you.

I like a book with characters.

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My first day teaching at the high school went pretty well. I liked the
kids a lot.

Although I do not have the magical head-tingling feeling I once
had as a teacher, it appears that I do remember the basics of getting
through a class. Also, some key points were recently refreshed by
Squire’s previous teacher, such as: 1) making eye contact with the
students is a good thing; 2) smiling periodically is a good thing; 3)
wearing clothes that cover your body is a good thing; 4) telling people
that they are doing well tends to make them do better. So I’m already
ahead of the game, what with my pretty blue eyes and my magical molars
and my muu-muus and my tendency to blush-inducing praise.

Squire has been fantabulous this past few weeks, funny and
sweet and incredibly easy to live with. Partly this is the new teacher,
who is not a twelve year old eedjit; partly this is two years of
extensive training in the effectiveness of "so?" as a response to any
stupid commentary; partly this is just growing up. I don’t mean we’ve
taken up living at Unicorn Junction– the darkness surrounds us, as
always. But it was never the dark that was scary, but ever what was
hidden in it, and this seems more manageable lately for him.

We have mice at the cottage. This would bother me except that
they are so courteous, the way they open up the carton of cigarettes
for you and pull out a pack and then tenderly open that as well,
dragging out and destroying the first cigarette so you don’t have that
"20 wedged in a pack" problem, and then they scurry around leaving
little nicotine-addled poops! Adorable.

Friar is cracking me up nearly daily, too, which makes me
think there’s magic in our water or something. What’s with all the
smiling around here?

Perplexed by Clarence Thomas, by the left
leg in Ingres’ Odalisque (seriously, what IS that?), by adults who
still choose books by genre, and the other usual suspects, but
generally I’m doing well. And you?

in a minor key

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I recently was led to the statistic that 15% of Americans
self-declare as atheist or "no god" or "agnostic". FIFTEEN. That’s
huge. And while I realize that religion is a choice, whereas other
groupings (race, sex, sexual preference) are not, still, 15% is a sizable minority. And I found myself picturing a future in which…

Atheist Eye for the Christian Guy…Five
fabulous atheists, experts in the fields of logic, debate, reasoning
and skepticism, are unleashed upon a
Christian whose friends or loved ones believe he needs to be a bit
less… righteous. The guy is trained to think for himself, gets a good
set of
books to read, and acquires a sense of humor! Note: He’s still going to
be a Christian, he’s just not going to be annoying!

The Compounds is an animated situation comedy focusing on the
lives of the Freethink family. Elementary-school aged atheist brothers
Sartre and Atticus Freethink have been moved by their Granddad Robert
from their university town in the northest to the quiet, almost
completely Christian suburb of Woodcrest, Alabama. Less controversial than the comic strip that inspired it, the Compounds nevertheless raises some hackles… and some laughter!!

The A Word
is a television drama series on Showtime that portrays the apathy,
ambivalence, and anger of a group of atheist and agnostic people and
their acquaintances in Austin.

Like any other minority group, atheists will also be given token
roles on
major television shows, providing comic relief for the most part, but
also providing touching insights into the subtle (and not-so-subtle!)
challenges faced by atheists. In one particularly memorable episode,
the atheist doctor on whatever the hit medical drama is will reveal to
the other doctors that in fact it is offensive to atheists when doctors
talk about heaven, and maybe he’ll even add that this is why he became
a doctor, because seeing the poor little atheist kids grow up without
the false promise of an afterlife has something something something.
Still hammering out the details. In real life, the actor who portrays
the atheist will have "candid" pictures of himself taken going in and
out of some place of worship or another. Alternately, the atheist
character will be played by an atheist, who will then be assumed to
speak for all atheists everywhere whenever she opens her mouth. There
will be a big fuss about how she was hired entirely for her acting
ability and not to fill some "quota", which will be entirely true since
there is no quota to ensure that what you see on your screen bears any
relationship to the world you actually live in.

eventually: Ithaca

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stately plump anne tuckova
i’ve
been not terribly happy with myself lately and the rainy weather early
this month was a factor but not a cause. it’s better now, getting
better, but i was ripped with conflict between a need for drastic
change
and an equally dramatic unwillingness to act. i gave bartleby a run for
his title in my absolute disinclinations; if you
could win a race by taking steps away, i would have won.

came from the stairhead
winning
by distraction, by making games for myself in which getting
one
thing done counts as success. on advice i went hunting for wellingtons
but failed and so decided to buy more socks, since my knee-high striped
socks last winter were the highlight of my personal sartorial
season. also you can gain and lose a lot of weight before your socks
don’t fit. i went to a sock store, by which i mean a store entirely
devoted to socks, in which they had no knee-high striped socks, no
knee-high solid-colored socks in my size, also no striped
ankle socks in my size, and then i gave up asking what else wasn’t
behind the counter and came home and threw out all the socks that were
holey, or vaguely frayed or even vaguely ugly, anyway, so that if i
ever find
socks i won’t hesitate to buy them. then i gave away or recycled all
the clothes until i had it down to two boxes. the balloon has to get
off the ground first, and then you can see where you’re going.

bearing a bowl of lather
i am working on being the person i want to be, a person who splashes in
puddles instead of weeps into them, a person who looks for the rainbow,
a person who smiles randomly. friday i was snapping my fingers in
rhythm with my footsteps and i thought: as with everything, it’s just a matter of continuing to pick up one foot and move it
forward.

a mirror and a razor lay crossed
i
got offered a job teaching the graduating class at a high school (two
hours a week). i used to be a good teacher but some years ago i tanked
hard and decided my mojo was gone forever. it may be, but the school
needs a teacher. i don’t ever want to return to teaching full-time,
even part-time is too much, but i need, i think, to start scouting
schools in person (on behalf of squire) and this is one way. also i
always liked 12th graders. also i think being forced to put on shoes
(with socks! must go hunting before next week!) once a week for two
hours will probably be good for me.

summer 1984

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That summer I had a job at an elementary school helping out with
organizing books and cleaning classrooms for the coming year. I put
things by subject and then alphabetically by author like any good
librarian’s daughter. I hated that you knew I worked there, that you
might show up with your stupid car, with the engine throbbing and some
idea of where we might go. And I would go; I went because it was easier
than making up reasons why not to.

And I hated you enough to be honest. I told you I didn’t like you
and that I wouldn’t like you and still you came around, puppy eyes and
hopeful. What were you doing, panting after a teenage girl who already
preferred to be alone. I hadn’t had my heart broken yet but I knew what it
would feel like and I wanted none of it. I went to Simon and Garfunkel to
express myself and wrote the lyrics for I Am A Rock on the back of a
receipt I found in your glove compartment and still you wouldn’t go
away.
At work, I put tape around broken bindings, swept out the cobwebs, and thought everything was a metaphor.

You were polite to my parents and they liked you which didn’t work the
way I planned and I tore away in my anger to get into that car of
yours and drive and drive, listen to the radio. You weren’t even
interesting enough to like music. One day I went to your house (who
lives with his parents when he’s over twenty?) to meet your parents. I
thought I was going to meet them, I even prepared my face. And the dog
stood outside the door and barked and howled. You thought I knew what I
was doing. People thought I was running from something but in fact I’d
been backing away ever since I learned to walk. You told me it wasn’t
like it was something I hadn’t done before. In fact it was like nothing
I’d done before. Afterwards you let me go, past the dog and its dripping\u003c/span\>\nsaliva, and back to your damn car and back to my house where I couldn't\ntell them anything.\nDon't call me again, I said. Don't come here again ever. I said "go\naway" and I finally meant it.\u003cbr\>\n\u003cbr\>I think it's shortly after that that I cut off all my hair, but\nthis may be poetic license. I know there was the scene where you pulled\nup in front of the school and I told you to go away and the principal\ncame out and I made like I didn't know you.\nYou peeled out of the parking lot and the principal looked at me and I\nshrugged. How could I explain the things that seemed so out of my\ncontrol that I couldn't even name them. \u003cbr\>\n\u003cbr\>So I was back to taking the bus and walking. And then school\nstarted again, and my new job was grading papers, and some teacher told\nme "Go away" was a fragment, and I told her it was a complete sentence.\nComplete because YOU was implied. I got fired. I was right, though.\u003c/div\>\n”,0]
);
//–>dripping
saliva, and back to your damn car and back to my house where I couldn’t
tell them anything.
Don’t call me again, I said. Don’t come here again ever. I said "go
away" and I finally meant it.

I think it’s shortly after that that I cut off all my hair, but
this may be poetic license. I know there was the scene where you pulled
up in front of the school and I told you to go away and the principal
came out and I made like I didn’t know you.
You peeled out of the parking lot and the principal looked at me and I
shrugged. How could I explain the things that seemed so out of my
control that I couldn’t even name them.

So I was back to taking the bus and walking. And then school
started again, and my new job was grading papers, and some teacher told
me "Go away" was a fragment, and I told her it was a complete sentence.
Complete because YOU was implied. I got fired. I was right, though.

real life phone conversation

tuckova1 Comment

PERSON 1: Heyy….. are you drinking?
PERSON 2: Well. Yes. A glass of wine. Why?
1: I think that’s more than a glass I’m hearing.
2: What, am I all slurry?
1: No, I can just tell. It’s like how if I were Norwegian, I could detect your Swedish accent.

2: Ooh, am I doing that e.nun.ci.ate thing?
1: A bit. That was so not one glass of wine.
2: It was!
1: What, a water glass?
2: Well… yeah.

some photos from the cotthut last weekend are up.

2/44 = 1/22

tuckova4 Comments

Two weeks of school down. Squire’s already lost his
locker key and missed a couple homework assignments, but he seems to be
holding onto the lunch card, which is impressive. And I think the
school supplies thing went okay. Ah, the school supplies thing: I
promised Julia I’d tell.

In June, the teachers hand out a list of supplies. This list
is all the things the students will need in addition to the previous years’
supplies, so you have to remember what all that stuff was (i.e.: the
special little white shoes for gym class that became cottage shoes in
the summer? remember you need to replace those now; they’re not on the
list) and also get the stuff that’s on the list new this year (
i.e.: four paintbrushes: three large and round, one flat. The large and
round ones have to be different sizes, which you didn’t know, so Day1
you’ll be back at the store getting different sizes). And you also have
this stack of notebooks to buy, different sizes and different lines.
And even different pens with different ink colors. And each notebook is
supposed to have the kid’s full information on it, AND a plastic cover.
No store is going to have all the notebooks, all the right sized
covers, all the pens. So the week before school starts is a mass of
parents running around the stationery stores and already resenting the school for all of
this, the purpose of which is as far as I can tell to rob you of the
last week of summer.

This year I asked Friar to do the shopping with Squire,
because last year I nearly had a nervous breakdown in the "tea egg and
sugar company" trying to find 6 each of four different kinds of
notebooks with the corresponding plastic covers. When facing a nervous breakdown: Delegate. They went to three
different stores and still didn’t get everything, but finally we got
the whole list checked off.

And then in September you drop the kids off at the school,
marching bravely through the doors in their new backpacks (when Squire
started first grade, his backpack was full of so many supplies that he
actually tipped over backwards), and 45 minutes later they pop back
out. And the list has changed over the summer, it has always changed,
and this year I realized that a Clever Parent would have waited til Day
1, asked for the list on the 45 minute day, and then gotten the stuff, because the first
week of school is a JOKE and I feel like a PD Eastman dog: The parents
are going around and around. "Go around again!"

Anyway, two weeks. We have the tutor again, so that’s going
well. And we’re remembering this
year that life exists beyond school. Last night we played Catan, and
Squire and I worked to sing all staccato like Regina Spektor and we
worked on dinner together, because it’s fun, and because I maintain the
hope that through cooking he’ll come to appreciate a more balanced
diet. Thursday night as Squire piled his plate with the third helping
of pasta
and cheese (our ironic nod to the Italian pasta
strike), bypassing the homemade primavera sauce and the juicy chunks of
chicken for which the pasta was supposed to be a side dish, I realized
that he eats like a college student. First, there’s the stunning
quantities, with no parallel weight gain. Also, there’s the fixation on
white foods. In college, you gravitate towards white food cause it’s
easy to cook, but Squire genuinely loves the stuff. Toast!
Awesome, my favorite! Pasta and white cheese, mmmmm. RAMEN NOODLES
ALWAYS YUMMY. Maybe when he goes to college he’ll have a love affair
with vegetables just to continue in his bizarrosity.

We’re doing well, I hope you are, too.

Bossy!

tuckova2 Comments

There’s some bit of nonsense at the end of some of Squire’s latest
audiobooks that just burns me up. It says that it’s important for kids
to be read to… and that in today’s busy world, blahblahblah,
audiobooks are just as good as a parent reading to a child. In today’s
busy world on what planet, I’d like to know. Audiobooks are great –and
I certainly appreciate Jim Dale for his ability to read Harry Potter
and the Gobbledygook over and over again, because once was fine, but
once was enough– but they’re not the same as reading aloud.

Now, I understand that not everyone is the fantastic reader I
am. I am to reading what Jules Winnfield is to a foot massage: I don’t
be ticklin’ or nothing! But I do not read to my son because I love the
sound of my own voice (shut up!). I read to him because:

1. It’s fun to do things together. It’s fun to watch movies
together, learn things together, go on trips together, because we can
talk about it afterwards. How cool was it when Will got his wish of
snow for his birthday? It wasn’t what we expected at all, was it?

2. It’s good to see how he thinks. I think it’s important for me as a
parent to observe how information gets processed, and to guide the
processing when it’s tangled, and sit back and relish it when it is as
clear as only a child’s processing can be. I get more out of a book
when I read it to him because I see it in his eyes and mine at the same
time.

3. It is good for me as a reader to read aloud. Words sound different,
and sentences sing or they don’t, and it’s different than reading in my
head. I would have missed some of the magic of "The Subtle Knife" if
I’d read it to myself, and I’m glad I’ve had someone to read to.

4. If he has questions while I’m reading to him, he can ask. This might
not be As True for girls as for boys, but it’s been my observation that
it’s easier to talk about something if you stumble over it together.
It’s true for vocabulary definitely, and also for storytelling.

5.
It is fun to experience things that are generally solitary together. So
much of what we experience is solitary, even if we’re all in it
together– reading together is like watching a television show where
both people are watching the same show at the same moment, and both
people can hit the pause button whenever they want to be witty or
insightful or confused. I like the remote control in the middle of the
couch, and I like reading as a companionable activity.

Please understand: I like audiobooks. Kids have the ability to listen to the same thing over and over again (CrazyFrog, I hate you so much) and it’s been great for Squire to have that available to him, because I wouldn’t do it. I understand that in "today’s busy world" we sometimes can’t take time
for everything that we feel we ought to do for our kids. I really do
get that and I also understand that I am privileged to have the time to
read to my kid. But I think that if you don’t, you’re hurting… not so
much the kid, because whatevs, kids are tough. But you’re hurting
yourself. And I’m angry that these audiobooks, in the interest of marketing
audiobooks, imply that they’re more able to do your job than you are.
Delegate the housekeeping, delegate the lice removal. But really, why
delegate the fun stuff? And reading is fun.