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

sometimes a kiss is a thimble

tuckova1 Comment

we watched "peter pan" (2003) the other night. i understand the
difficulty of adapting fiction into film but i am disappointed anyway.
why do people always want to take a story that is perfectly lovely and
simple and clear and add to it? that things must be subtracted i
understand ("princess bride") but that things get added, especially
things that change (what i perceive to be) the basic mores of the story
("charlie and the chocolate factory") is something i’ll never get.

every love song on the radio is about your love. every
biography is essentially your story. every experience speaks to your
experience and every horoscope describes you perfectly. you take the
specifics of a story and smudge them away until there are nothing
left but basic values, then you take the ones that you approve and
clasp
them to yourself, wanting to see how perfectly they fit. see how this
song uses the words "i love you"; that’s exactly how you feel. she
struggled against adversity and so did you; so you’re the same. if i’ve
traveled there then i know what it’s like and you don’t have to
try to explain, and you are generous and stubborn and today will be lucky.

the thing is that the more you push and pull and shove things around
until they look like something that you understand, the less they are
something you really understand. the less they are something you can
understand, i think.

i never really liked william carlos williams, i never understood the
beauty of a red wheelbarrow and though so sweet and so cold has moved
into my heart it’s a very small space compared to a tedious argument of
insidious intent. i like a little ambiguity. and i like cover versions, i like reinterpretations, i like personal footnotes in impersonal
essays. so i’m not saying i require the thing itself or nothing; i’m
not saying my feelings don’t come with a soundtrack and a slideshow,
because they totally do. but to work there has to be a response, not
just an edit and addition and then a flat presentation.

i’m straying; i’m sorry. where was i going? what i wanted to say is
that is that i see you taking pictures, songs, words, and adapting them
to the story you want to tell me, but in a way that takes away from the
original intent without actually adding anything to what you want to
say. robin hitchcock sang you’re projecting onto me/what you’d like
yourself to see but this is even worse, a step further: you’re
projecting onto me what somebody else saw somewhere else. i am
disturbed, i am increasingly disturbed, i am disturbed to the
point where i don’t know if we are even having the same conversation
anymore. i need you to talk to me in your words, not exclusively
quotation. i need you to look at me and see me, not a jumble of
presupposition. i need you to listen to me, not to the voices i remind
you of. and i need you to hear what i say, not what you thought my
words should be.

merry christmas

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christmas is lovely at home. we had salmon and potatoes (czechs have
carp, which is revolting, and potato salad, which i am sure i have told
you about my hate affair with potato salad). Friar Tuck tried to reproduce
the food categories to reflect tradition but to make food so that we
would be pleased, and i am so pleased to have this. Squire Tuck was his
perfect self, commenting on the beauty of black olives against pink
salmon. we ate on my grandmother’s china. i got a sparkly thing because
Friar Tuck has figured out that i like sparkly things, which is very clever
of Friar Tuck. Squire Tuck got seven books because we think he likes reading, i
guess. if you fill a martini glass half full of griotte and then layer gin on top it looks like christmas and it tastes like heaven. i could fill you with details to last you to the new year. we’ve
been listening to laurie anderson’s life on a string and iva bittova’s
kolednice and of course nohavica. i love this song because it seems so
rousing and lively and the lyrics are so sad and determined; it doesn’t work quite
without the music but i’ll give it to you anyway. merry and happy and i hope things are half as good where you are as they are here.

Mary, Virgin Mary
She went around the world, she went alone
Just with Joseph
He was a little useless
They both wandered around the outskirts of Judea

They wandered through the night looking for a place
Where they could lay their heads

They were expecting a child
And none of the people
wanted anything to do with them
All of them said,
you will reap what you sow.

Mary, Virgin Mary
Solved this problem on her own
She found a little stable

It stank a bit
but a bucket of water washed it clean

And then she lay down
and cried a little
And Joseph was hopeless
With a face like a mule
And then near midnight
with the help of god
and thanks to courage

She brought into the world a boy as pretty as a picture

Mary, Virgin Mary,
Who was almost alone in everything

And then a comet flashed across the sky
Mary said,
Josef, let’s go out into the world

There is no place for us here
They don’t love us here
They will kill our son
And so the three of them left

What happened next you surely know
What you don’t know, you can imagine

Mary, Virgin Mary

Who was in all things almost alone

and aNOTHer thing

tuckova2 Comments

on the weekend nobody felt exactly lively. Squire Tuck and i decorated for christmas
finally on sunday, but mostly i sat around in my jammies putting together a puzzle and reviewing my
appreciation of the underrated art of NOTH. whatcha doing? nothing.

on monday Squire Tuck stayed home because he was "sick" and because i’m a
parent who believes that if a kid really really doesn’t want to go to
school, their ability to learn is as hampered as if they were ill, so:
stay home. spare the teacher and yourself. by monday afternoon he had
upgraded to sick (without scare quotes) and by monday evening he was
screaming in pure frustration at Friar Tuck for correcting his pronunciation
of some word or another, and i tried to rub his back and he burst into
tears from the pain of being touched. ah, genuine sickness, i haven’t seen you in a while.

yesterday Squire Tuck felt the christmas spirit of giving and decided to share
his illness with me; by 5 p.m. i was weeping on the couch while we
passed the tissues back and forth and reminded each other to drink more
tea. we watched a bunch of PBS tapes ("in search of myths and heroes"),
which was just so supercool. we talked about shangri-la and how
although religious wars
strike me as ridiculous, it’s not like atheists are above it all: the
cultural revolution wreaked as much destruction as a holy war. we
talked about zeus getting out athena by splitting his skull open, and
whether or not a drill would be a good way to drain the sinuses. Squire Tuck
thinks not but it’s still an option on my table. i cannot go much
longer with the mouth breathing, three more days of this and i’ll be
unable to explain the difference between "it’s" and "its" and then how
will we buy bread.

Friar Tuck came home at about seven with a full bag of fruit and wine and
rum and vegetables. he made this giant vat of vegetable soup and played chess with Squire Tuck and poured
rum punches into me until everything, including the mouth breathing, was
very very funny, and very sleepy, and i went to bed. and slept! and
feel better today, although still unable to breath through my nose.

Squire Tuck’s already back in school.

last night i sat in a pile of tissues (one of my 2 disgusting habits)
and thought how lucky i am. lucky that i have a kid with whom i can
talk about cultural revolutions and splitting headaches. lucky
that i have a guy who knows so precisely how to take care of me that i
barely need to explain anything. it’s the difference between falling off the highwire and bouncing on a trampoline.

as the philosopher jagger once said…

tuckova6 Comments

some things you want you have to absolutely give up on wanting before you can get them. it is not merely the stuff of hollywood, this "just when i thought i could never…" and then boom. if you want to get pregnant and you think you can’t, you must sell the children’s books you’ve been collecting since you were old enough to imagine wanting a child (you were nine) and those you can’t sell, you must give away, and you must adopt some very bad habits, and then, let me tell you, boom. just like in the movies. but you can’t say that you’re giving up on it, you have to really give up on it. this is true for all things that are controlled by magic.

some things you want you have to absolutely give up on wanting before you realize you didn’t actually want them. this is what they were telling you but you weren’t listening because you really really wanted it. you want to be liked by him and you want to be liked by him and you want and you want and he doesn’t. your desperation burns a path in front of you, pleading and not merely wanting but needing. you have to let it go, all that desperation, the belief you can draw it to you with the force of your will alone. walk away and every step you take away you realize what hell your life would have been if you had stood there one more minute. stop wanting the praise of the people who you do not respect; stop wanting the affection of people who do not share your values; stop wanting people who do not care for you. this is true for all things that are other people.

some things you want you have to work hard for. mostly it is about deciding that you want it. mostly it is about deciding how much you want it and whether you can do the amount of work involved. people don’t mind if you say you want something for free, because everybody wants everything for free, but you have to know some things take work. you have wanted to go to greece since you were twelve. maybe earlier. why haven’t you been there yet? you have planned to do something about your brittle heart for three years now, why don’t you get on that? you can have these things if you work. this is true for all things that are you.

**the title of this post is an allusion to a line from the television show HOUSE, in which the good doctor makes an allusion to a line from the rock band THE ROLLING STONES ("You can’t always get what you want").

QUIXOTIC is also a lot of points

tuckova1 Comment

i am troubled that i am not getting a rush of emails along the lines of "WHEN in february, oh my darling anne, can i crush you in my arms and look deep into your pretty blue eyes and confess that for the eleven months you are not here my life is entirely devoid of meaning?" i know you’re lying, but seriously, if you want to hang out in february you best book it early and often. i’m saying. i have vegas to attend to, you know.

on saturday i saw a woman on the bus whose hair was shellacked about five inches off her skull and her makeup was so heavy i could see not merely the line of makeup along the jaw, but the thickness of the line. it facial braille by mary kay. she was wearing jeans and a puffy coat; i waited for her head to detach and go wherever it was going, which was certainly someplace different from the rest of her body, but she was all still in one piece when i got off at my stop.

and saturday continued to be weird. saturday night we were in this nearly-deserted restaurant playing scrabble and the waiter told us (over the hum of the television) that this was a classy establishment in which one could not play games, as it disturbs the other customers. pointing out that the other customers totalled about 10 in a room that seats 100+ was not persuasive, and so we had to leave. it was like getting kicked out of denny’s for studying, i was like, "whaa–?" the next place we went to we asked permission, just in case the earth had reversed polarities or something, and the waitress looked at us as if we had lost our entire minds. "yes, of COURSE you can play games here!" thank goodness. conversation is all well and good but i won’t rest until i’ve spelled CRAZIEST instead of just lived through it.

things are generally good. i got back to sleeping through the night after nearly a month of frantic insomnia, and we’re all much happier for it. a freakishly clean house, a dozen ambitious projects (started, rarely completed), and an insane ability to work without even stopping for cigarettes is all quite entertaining for me, but i gather it is not much fun to live with.
also, i never seem to get done the stuff that NEEDS to get done. it’s like, "you know what? i haven’t cleaned the tiles with a toothbrush in a really long time! i should get on that! what, pay the bills? oh, yeah, plenty of time for that later!! now… where’s that toothbrush?"

it is a good thing i am very very pretty because sometimes i am also very very stupid. but charming! and charm always carries us through the dumb stuff, right? even if we don’t think it will. charm is a total SuperPower. people think they want, like, the ability to fly or something, and those traditional superpowers may be useful, like with invisibility one could rob banks and look at naked people without getting caught, but charm has useful everyday applications. for example, i will probably need it to sort out that bill i missed last month. awhoops.

merely updating

tuckova3 Comments

this morning i got up early and took Squire Tuck to the train station; he went with his german class to vienna for the day. i love europe. i then came home and took a two hour nap, in which i woke up a couple times from dreams that were remarkably not horrific, and so i made myself roll over and try some more. it was strange and lovely. i advocate naps but usually 20 minutes is all i can do before my brain starts cooking up new schemes for me to pick at, and so two hours was like an All Nap Extravaganza Variety Show with donny and sonny and cher and marie and purple socks and you babe.

i bought our tickets for february finally yesterday. shopping on the internet is so easy it almost doesn’t feel like i’m trying; i got very angry at the systems that were booting me off for having a different IP than my (US) address led them to believe, the nosey parkers, but i finally got the tickets and it was cheaper than i’d expected, so yay me. i am so adept and whatnot.

after approximately 20 years of dressing as a stagehand i decided last winter to branch out into colors. COLORS! that is exciting, isn’t it. apparently i decided going with just one color to start, and apparently that one color is "wine" because in unpacking my winter clothes i discovered that i now look like a stagehand with a drinking problem. perhaps next i will go for "green" and i can be a stagehand for a play about people who get lost in the woods while consuming a fine merlot. i spent about 20 minutes talking to andrea about this very important issue. i know it is dumb but it was so nice to not talk about something that cannot be solved. i am decided to be Trivial and Bubbly with Extra Trivia and Bubbles for the forseeable future, like possibly even until after new years.

the beer party was fun; Friar Tuck cleverly snuck in three (3!) non-alcoholic beers, despite which we managed to drink off most of our discerning tastebuds well before we made it to the end. this means we have some for the next time you come to visit, but you’d better make it soon, because now that we know what we like, we’re probably going to go through it fairly quickly. slurp.

circus performance next tuesday. pictures then, if nothing before then comes to mind.

apropos of friday

tuckova3 Comments

1. i often tell people "i don’t have a television" because although we have a set, it’s not connected to the antenna- we only use it for DVDs and videos. so we don’t watch sports or news, but we do keep up with some things. recently i’ve been alternating "big love" and "deadwood" and i have to recommend this formula only if you want your brain to explode from the dissonance. which, i like that.

2. "the big rock candy mountain" is quite possibly the most twisted "children’s" song ever. i found this website which warns "Remember, although this is a fun song to learn and sing, having such easy access to cigarettes and alcohol would not actually be a "good" thing. Smoking and alcohol addictions are harmful to your health," and "…speaking of candy, please also visit Obesity and Your Environment and My Food My World!" hahaha. good thing they left off the verse about being buggered sore like a hobo’s whore; perhaps they don’t have a link to explain why that would be a bad thing.

3. i told Squire Tuck’s tutor that it already seems like Squire Tuck is doing better. "this is not going to be a sprint" pavel told me, apparently concerned that i was going to be thinking things are all better. "this year is more a marathon, and we’re just starting…"

"yes," i answered, "but now it feels like Squire Tuck has finally got his running shoes on."

4. i’m sleeping maybe 4 hours a day and consequently wandering around in a total daze for the remaining 20. my brain is skipping from one rock to the next and i’m playing "don’t look down, don’t look down." i haven’t cooked anything in over a week. i told Friar Tuck i was a good prep cook, because i can focus on one task at a time, but not an assembly, but he says i’m more of a post-cook, which is true. i can reheat like a master.

5. we’re having a party tomorrow, did i tell you? Friar Tuck wants to find out which beer is his favorite. as even Friar Tuck cannot drink 15 whole beers at once, nor can he compare them side by side effectively (because one might get warm while he is drinking the others, etc. SCIENCE) he has decided to have a tasting party, whereby everyone will split the beers and compare them. it’s all very scientific, as it is Friar Tuck running the show. there are evaluation
sheets, and also tables for information. a white board may be involved. Friar Tuck thinks i am making fun of him because i am.

6. what else? is it strange to put "brush your teeth" on the "to do" list? because that’s on mine.

places, activities, and ways to sleep

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on the Charles Bridge
on the 28th of October
on trams sometimes
on trains usually
in cars nearly every time
(unless i am driving)
on buses, but not well.

getting a haircut
watching a movie
writing a letter
reading a book
sitting in an all-night bar
because there was no room at the inn
and no money in my pocket

i tied my feet together
so i wouldn’t wake my imaginary husband.
i tied my wrists together
to take it out of my empty hands
things that are hot like blankets from the dryer
things that are cold like ice on the nightstand

last night, curling my hand around your finger,
watching the streetlight through the curtain
i thought i will never fall in love
i will never fall asleep
i will never fall

bully for you

tuckova4 Comments

yeah, so Squire Tuck got beaten up in school a couple weeks ago.

to say that he’s one of the bravest people i know is the spin i like best for this right now. as in, the morning after it happened i told him he didn’t have to go to school if he didn’t feel like it, and he said, "they made me really sad and they made me really mad, but i don’t want them to feel like they made me afraid, and the best way to show them that is to go back to school." and he went.

it’s hard, the way you want desperately to be and to show that you are 100% on his side. it’s hard because the first thing is that you want to say "how did it get to this point?" and you want your kid to be able to take responsibility for his part, if he had one. everything starts somewhere. but it’s not about who started it, once he’s on the floor and someone else is kicking him.

Squire Tuck is not the only one being targeted. Squire Tuck is perhaps the only one who was held down by one kid while other kids kicked him, but Squire Tuck is not the only one afraid to go to school. Squire Tuck is not the sole target, and more obviously Squire Tuck is not the only person hurt by this. it’s all very messy. it is smeared with pain. bullies suck.

so there’s been a class meeting, and we’ve had a meeting with the teacher, and with the school psychologist. it’s all quite informative. to say that i’m furious would be an understatement, but what i want is not retribution, but resolution. i want it to stop; i want it to be stopped for good.

anyway, anyway. this horrible thing happened to my boy. the things about it that suck are nearly everything. the things that do not suck are of interest and so i will share them:

about Squire Tuck:
what saves this story is that Squire Tuck told me about it, that he knew it had to be talked about, and when he was done talking and listening he said he didn’t feel like talking about it any more for a while. there is licking wounds and there is picking scabs, and Squire Tuck knows which is which. that’s a strength.
and i liked that when we talked about it, that he doesn’t think of this in terms of what he should change about himself so that it doesn’t happen again, but in terms of how he should deal with this person so that it doesn’t happen again. he knows he’s not broken. i think that’s awesome.

about others:
this feeling i have that everyone i tell becomes part of this mass of people behind us, this collection of people who love Squire Tuck and see him for who he is. is he a silly boy, is he american, does he have blue eyes, is he small for his age, does he have a freakish fondness for swords and fantasy? yes.
is discussing these things moving towards solving the problem? no, not really. because first of all, we can’t change most of it, and secondly, he’s not the one who did something wrong.
i knew i’d have to cover some ground again that i’m tired of covering; i expected that. BUT! i did not expect his friend’s mother to take me out for wine and perspective; his circus teacher to offer to walk him to school; my parents to make a late-night call offering any assistance i could imagine. friends and family: the army of Squire Tuck.

so that’s where we are.

tutor to two-two tuckova

tuckova1 Comment

i dream that my ear itches and i go looking for a q-tip. they’re not on the bathroom shelf where they usually are; they’re on a different shelf, but it’s not any kind of a stressful hunt or anything, just, huh, different shelf. i wake up and my ear itches and i go looking for the q-tips, which i now remember i moved to the top shelf a few days ago. "well, well, you!" i tell my reflection, "you make my dreams come true!"

kids these days: which is more surprising, that a third of all czechs (mostly young people) don’t have any idea what happened on november 17th, or that only a third of california students passed their physical fitness test? those who cannot remember the past will be condemned to do sit-ups.

ah, here’s a topic. i hired a tutor for Squire Tuck last week. he starts this week so i have no real evaluation yet. i just know that Friar Tuck is unable to get over the wall that is Squire Tuck’s lack of organization, focus, and mainly interest, and i gave up slamming my head against it last year. grades have been slightly worse than poor this year. he comes home with homework that Friar Tuck is only able to explain by virtue of his fascination with grammar ("ah, this pluperfect verb is derived from the noun that shares a root word with this other noun"), and then Squire Tuck pulls stuff like, "now, what’s a noun again?" Friar Tuck has a full head of beautiful hair and i can’t watch him tear it out anymore; nor am i about to put my own long luxurious locks* at stake. i signed on for a number of things in parenting, including the understanding that i would be puked on more than twice, but i am not ready to drill a child endlessly in subjects about which he does not give a damn. i would have thought that education in matters such as subject and predicate was the job of the school (i thought my job was "try to aim for the bucket next time, sweetie"), but i would apparently have been wrong, and i am not willing to fill the gap, but i can see the kid is getting lost. hence: tutor.

*ha

Friar Tuck and i had a bit of disagreement about it, because getting someone to drill Squire Tuck on the difference between a noun and a verb, however creatively and professionally they do so, does not solve the fact that Squire Tuck couldn’t care less which is which. i think it’s worth trying anyway. i don’t know, but i bet i’ll turn out to be right. i usually am.

to his credit, despite his inability to tell a maple leaf from an oak leaf, Squire Tuck can run for 20 minutes solid AND he knows what november 17th was about.

yesterday we watched amadeus and then we watched the hurra torpedo video. it was a musical mashup of ginormous proportions! and i think: all parents want their children to be happy. i can be constantly disappointed that he doesn’t use his intelligence for the greatest possible profit to himself and others, whether or not he’s happy, or i can stand in the front row and cheer while he slams the refrigerator door down with percussive humor with his pants falling off him, as long as he’s happy. and i think it’s clear that i’m a parent who is going to fully applaud kitchen appliance 80s cover bands. but i also think i should get him a tutor in case he decides to write an opera. so to speak. in whatever form it takes.