Lock

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Under your thumb,
wrapped around your finger.
Not because you want it that way but
because you thought it would be safer
because they said so;

Nape grazed by knuckles
it’s colder than you expect
under a street lamp and
worse, the darkness between street lamps

footsteps behind you

Where are you going with this?
You just want to go home.

Sweaty leather in your palm –
a trip you took once, a souvenir
of a place you wanted to go so much
you didn’t mind when you got somewhere else.
Remember that, remember how that felt.

Teeth cutting into your skin; why?
Maybe there are no footsteps,
maybe everything echoes in your head,
maybe what unlocks your secrets
can’t also be what shields them.

No one thing is enough;
nothing is enough.
Do you hold the keys or
are you grasping at straws?
After this we can talk about "clutch".

better than nothing

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I went out for a few beers with a friend of mine last night and it was
good, though I came home singing which Friar will tell you and nearly
everyone else will agree is not my greatest talent. He told me to shut
up, using more words and more politely, but I got the point so I killed
him at Scrabble and went to bed.

I’m re-entering one of my periods of having no idea how I look, but
getting a distinctly bad feeling about it. I once went about a month thinking I
oughtn’t leave the house without a paper bag over my head. It’s not
that my image of myself has greatly improved since then, but more that
I’ve realized that people who sit around talking about how ugly they
are are either genuinely ugly, in which case they make others
uncomfortable, or are not genuinely ugly, in which case they make other
people bored, and my fear of being awkward or boring generally
outweighs my desire to tell people they don’t have to look at me when
they talk to me if they don’t want to. Anyway this is not the best
timing, self-image wise, but there’s not much to be done. I think I
will sew myself up a tent this weekend and wear it til the feeling
passes.

For reasons entirely beyond reason I decided to start The Life of Pi.
Dear Yann Martel I am very proud of you for doing all that research!
How many authors can list animals in a zoo for pages and pages? How
many authors can list deities of various religions with the same
fervor? I want to brush your pretty poetic hair for you and pinch your
sweet clever cheeks, but if you do not get me a plot in the next 20
pages I am going to throw your damn book across the room.

Last weekend Squire and I hung out with some old friends of mine,
people who think I’m a good singer by the way, though I think they’re
just impressed that I always know all the words. I remember everything.
I hadn’t seen these friends in uhm five years, so it was strange and
interesting to be sitting around like no time had passed, yakking away
and laughing. Squire fell asleep listening to Jan Werich read Svejk and
when I went upstairs to bed he was still smiling. In the morning we
drank strong coffee and watched the roe deer running in the
field up the hill.

on what’s fair game in an unfair game

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Today I am thinking about public vs. private personality. In
particular, I am thinking about the difference between having a
voluntary or involuntary public persona, especially as it relates to
politics. How much we expect the families of politicians to step up and
work for them, campaign for them, smile endlessly and never even
scratch their noses. I think it’s unfair. I think it’s wrong. It is the
way it’s done, though, and I wish we could agree on some rules. I wish
for rules to protect the innocent, and I also wish for rules that will
make it possible for me to mock the ridiculous.

Though it seems unfair to me, I’ll concede that in order to
win, it is now necessary to haul your family along for the ride. You
can’t be a drug addict and your spouse can’t be either; also ideally
your kids will be reasonably respectable. Somewhere along the line we
started thinking the choices you made as a family member were the
choices you would make as the leader of a country, and while I think
that’s not accurate I understand it’s part of the mythos and okay: You
wanna be president, your family will have to be at your side. And they
will be judged for their behavior at your side. If you don’t like that,
you don’t get to be the boss of the country.

So: You’re a family member of a politician. You’re going to
be judged. I don’t think it’s fair to judge anybody for their personal
appearance unless they’re trading on that appearance or have altered
that appearance. Plastic surgery is always fair game. The big nose you
inherited from your grandfather is not. Tattoos can be mocked. Acne
cannot. Bad makeup, bad perm, bad haircolor, ill-fitting clothes, and
the inability to walk in high heels for any person who is both old
enough to know better and financially capable of rectifying errors? I
have made those mistakes and so half the time I’m laughing with, but
make no mistake: I’m laughing. But it is not fair to mock without
sympathy the cluelessly young, honestly poor, or hopelessly
ill-advised, and it is never okay to assume that appearance (the one
you’re born with, at least) is any reflection of character.

But you can judge people for their behavior, for sure. Any
family member over the age of let’s say 16 should show up, unless they
have the flu or homework. They should look happy to be there. This is
not because they have to actually be happy but because if a family
member is in politics, I expect that member to have good enough manners
to handle a peace summit and I expect the rest of the family to be able
to muster the manners to smile through a a political convention. It is
not harder than telling Aunt Agatha you love that handmade sweater, and
if you don’t have the stamina for that, your family will not survive in
politics.

I
also think if they volunteer to go beyond standing at your side and
smiling and waving, if they, say, want to start their own blog in which
their description of themselves includes their astrological sign…
well, that’s like shooting Playmates in a barrel, isn’t it? And people
who fall asleep in church while trying to make their spouse look
attentive to an issue deserve at the very least to be openly laughed
at, even if they didn’t actually drool or anything.
I’ve yet to find anything funny in dog torture or glocks on a plane,
but I’m sure it will come to me. And it’s fair game, don’t you think?

Line of Beauty

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I finished The Line of Beauty finally. Around the middle, I
started thinking: Are we ever going somewhere with this? and sort of
sped through the second half of the book. I decided that we were not,
in fact, really ever going anywhere, Alan and I, but that I would give
his sentences the attention they deserved, so I went back to the middle
and started again and finished.

It was… good. I guess. I was reminded of the Penn Jillette
rule of clapping for the title of a movie when it appears in the movie,
and clapped dutifully every time Hollinghurst name-checked his own
novel, and ovated whenever he wanted to explain the title. It happened a lot. It’s true that it may have seemed worse to me for having Evelyn Wood-ed
and then seriously re-read the second half, but I think this really was
laid on thick and recurrent. Including, of course The Amazing Parallels
(or perhaps, the Amazing Serpentine Curves, bwaha) between the title of
the book, the plot, and the presentation of the plot. It was a little
anvillicious for me, as was the whole "Wow, and so the character named
Nick Guest turns out to be a permanent guest! Who knew?!" Uhm… the
guy who wrote the book? I know, I should have been prepared after Edward Manners, but… really?

I don’t know, y’all,
maybe I can’t read grown-up fiction anymore. I’m a little too aware of
the author wanting me to go someplace and I feel the pull of the puppet
strings too much and then I’m irritated. I’ve read precious little
contemporary fiction in the last decade where it felt like I was
reading something that was both True and true*, and I think that I now
value the latter, the feeling of the latter, as much as the former. If
you’re going to give me a story set in a world I’ve experienced or
believe is true (Thatcher’s England or whatever, as opposed to, say,
Prydain) I need to have it that things don’t always line up, the murder
isn’t always solved, the object of affection is not always attained;
and the misalignment and unsolved murder and unrequited love don’t make
everything worse–any more than coincidence leads to enlightenment or
solving the murder makes it less gruesome or falling in love means your
troubles are over. I like a revelation on the human condition as much
as the next person, but if it’s too contrived it feels like less a
moment of clarity and more like smoke and mirrors.

*off the top of my head: The Crow Road, Remains of the Day, Cat’s
Eye, and Middlesex all did a great job of making me feel like I was in
a real place and that the people were real without overdoing the
reality and while simultaneously getting to a point.

So Hollinghurst: dude, I don’t know. The sentences were nice,
sometimes even activating that little tingly part of my brain, which is
certainly a thrill. And the way he wrote dialogue, which at first made
me nutty, eventually sort of got entertaining, which may have been the
point in the beginning and I was too slow to catch it. He’s all "Really?" said Nick, meaning to convey his confusion at the
statement and also a sense of disbelief in Rachel’s apparent
unawareness, if she was, in fact, unaware. "Hmm," answered Rachel, and
Nick understood that she was keeping herself unaware, willfully holding
herself in check against the onslaught of inevitable, horrible reality.

So, I liked the sentences. I thought the backthought was
clever. I liked the snooty arty stuff, assuming he meant it to be both
informed, informative, and a bit pedantic. But the insights were…
Hey, did you know that coming of age was tricksy? Did you know that
when you move outside of the social circle you were born in, there can
be misunderstandings? Did you know that no matter how comfortable you
are with your identity, other people may not be? Put against a backdrop
of "hey, conservative politics were bad for lots of people; also, AIDS
sucks" and the message I get is that Hollinghurst thinks his readers
are a bit on the dumb side, and then the pedantic charm becomes a bit
less charming.  Maybe I should have just seen the movie.

NOTE TO G: I did like reading it, for clarity. I think I just miss our book group.

It’s a Key Party QUIZ!

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YOUR KEYS (check all that apply):
are on a keyring
face the same direction on your keychain (all teeth to one side)
line up in the order you normally use them (outside door, inside door, or whatever)
are stored on separate rings according to function (house keys, work keys)
are all on one master ring
have those little color tabs on them so you can find them quickly
are accompanied by an item that is not a key (laser pointer, army knife, rubber toy, etc.)
follow the rules of the James Spader character in "Sex Lies and Videotape"

TRUE/FALSE:
I didn’t know the jagged part was called "teeth".
I already knew the jagged part was called "teeth" but did not know that the part between the head and the shaft was called the "nape".
I knew teeth and nape.
I remember that the character’s name was Graham and am insulted that you spelled it out.
I understand all of these questions.
Yes, even the subtext, pfft.

ESSAY:
Describe your key system.

hands unreasonable never to touch

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I’m stuck in a moderately nasty memory loop. It’s that I remember so
much stuff and so much of it is awful that I think I made it up; and
then I try to remember something bracingly good, and presently I’m
counting dust motes and I’m no fun to be around at all. I can remember.
Just sometimes Billy Pilgrim drinks me under the table and there’s no
Montana Wildhack to comfort me.

So okay, we’ll do updates, shall we. Oh let’s! We meaning I took down
the decorations, the tree and the lights and everything today. I am
madly efficient and did it with only one cigarette break. It is very
funny how once the tree is gone that part of the room looks so empty.
When you put the tree up, you’re like, "Now how on earth shall I get to
my back issues of Scientific American for the next two weeks?" and then
two weeks later you’re both "Whoo, there’s that article on the temporal
lobe that I was looking for!" and also "Hey, should we buy some more
furniture or something?"

But we should not buy more furniture because in fact we’re meaning I’m
having the living room painted next week. I had to tell Friar about it,
because he has to clear off his desk. I was sort of tempted for a
minute to go ahead and have the room painted and see if he noticed but
the burden of clearing the desk frightened me into reason. So he
cleaned his desk while I undecorated. I believe he required quite a few
more breaks and he’s not done. Some people are not fixated on
completion.

The cat has been put on a diet because she is a fatty fattness. She doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. Yowr.

Oh, and I shaved my head. Partly because I watched Violently Happy and
it seemed like a good idea. Also because, as they say, I could. And
also, of course, because it was there.

New Year’s was magically delicious. We went to the beer garden for the
first fireworks, which were at 11 for reasons rather too Brno-esque to
detail. Then we went downtown and saw the midnight fireworks. The whole
thing was lovely and crazy and nearly precisely what I love about
living here, and I had it all encapsulated in my mind but then I didn’t
write it down immediately and now it seems so much my standard Making A
Big Insight From A Small Event, whoo, that I can’t quite bring myself
to do it.

Sometimes I feel like U2 on tour or something, ratcheting up the
emotion every night just to make a point when what I really want to do
is crash back with a bottle of whiskey and a pretty groupie or
something.

But my face is my own, as the poet said. What to say when you see me.

Bigger

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Possibly because it is right in front of you is why you didn’t see it.
Possibly it has been staring you in the face for so long that you got
used to overlooking its gaze. Possibly you didn’t want to see it but
that isn’t like you. And then also: Possibly it isn’t there at all and
you didn’t conjure it OUT of existence so much as you are conjuring it
INTO existence now.

So many things are possible.

And maybe it doesn’t come down to this one thing at all; maybe it’s a
bunch of little things adding into this tower of toppling horror. In
which case instead of standing there all bravely confronting what you
see, your time would be better spent taking apart the pieces, sorting
them into piles like you used to do with Legos. Not everybody has to be
a builder and especially you don’t have to build this up into a giant
scary thing. Sometimes it’s time to put the toys away; sometimes it’s
okay to say it’s this one little thing and that one little thing and
this thing and that thing and they don’t have to turn into something
bigger than you can solve.

There is not really a box big enough for all these things.

It is not good that this is happening but it is important to remember
that it is not happening to you just because you’re there for it. You
can realize it’s not about you. You can realize it’s not about anything
in fact. You can realize that flipping out was never your strong suit.
What are you good at? What are you good for? You can spend some time
reflecting on those strengths. What’s not up for debate is that you’ll
need them.

Christmas

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Christmas and I’m five, I think; this is a story I only know secondhand. My parents throw a party where they serve Scarlett O’Haras in tiny glasses because they don’t want people to underestimate the punch this punch packs, and apparently some people drink doubles in protest of my parents’ perceived cheapness, and I am doubtless wearing a cute velvet dress of some sort and carrying a tray of cocktails around to the grown-ups who give the cute little girl a sip of their presumably watered cranberry juice and southern comfort, except that my dad would never water a drink and later I am passed out on the coats with my cousin, who despite it being the 70s and the South knows he can’t drive home, so you can imagine how my brain spins in the coats, the fur scratching my cheeks.

And then it’s Christmas and I’m what, ten or eleven and my parents have made this weird modern arty kind of tree that you can buy in the store by 2002 but this is 1978 or so and such things are not in abundance; it’s homemade and a bit rickety. I am mildly sick as I always am on Christmas and am trying to hang the prettiest glass ornaments on our alt.tree, and one slips from my hand and falls and shatters. Shatter is an important word. My mother comes to scold me and realizes I’m running a fever and Christmas stress goes up three knots.

Or I’m seventeen and I’ve been out dancing and come home in something provocative and interesting, throw on a robe and run down the hall to shower off the smell of danger; it’s probably four or five in the morning and my grandfather is already awake, smoking in the living room, blowing the smoke up the chimney. "You shouldn’t smoke," I say automatically, pulling my robe closely over my dress and hoping he doesn’t see the glitter on my face, the cuts on my arms. "Why not?" he asks, and his eyebrows Spock at me, because he quit smoking years before only to be diagnosed with colon cancer. We get through Christmas without his saying anything to anyone or to me either. When he leaves he whispers in my ear to be careful if I can’t be good; this is the last time we talk before he dies.

Twenty-one and living in Japan and my mother comes bustling over the ocean with Christmas gifts and cheer, but to no avail; I am more desperately lonely than I have ever been in my life and all my edges are so blurred there is no core. We listen to the bell ring three times three times nine times and I am as empty as I can be and still be full of sadness.

And then twenty-five, or maybe only twenty-four? The Christmas when I sat in a living room full of nutcrackers apologizing to the woman who would never be my mother-in-law for breaking the heart of her boy who had never loved me, then later filling his truck with my things and moving to a new life that was, in the end, even worse than the awful one I was leaving.

There have been good Christmases, for sure. But it is altogether not my favorite holiday. Imagine me, yesterday, engaged in a shouting match with Squire over the importance of vacuuming pine needles before the cat chokes on them, and he says, "Why are we jumping on each other’s ay-ess-ess-es? I’m happy to be home with you and I know you’re happy to be home with me," and I burst into laughter colored tears because I am again reminded that it is not all about the past, but about the present, which we write as we go along.

And so now Friar is making something tasty with fish and we are listening to Cechomor’s Christmas CD and the tree is lit and you know, I’m trying as hard as I can to be the person I want to be. Now and for next year. And I wish for anyone this contentment and this hope.

pareidolia

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All landscapes look like a woman.
The wood has faces and faces in it;
the faces make you behave, try not to steal
remember to wash your hands.
And the woman is reclining,
waiting in the snow for you
or the warm desert sands will blow away
and she’ll be there
waiting, she’s not impatient
but don’t for a minute think she’s not there.
Or that the faces aren’t watching.
See that one? Looking right at you.

Squire writes:

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Oh, my G-O-D!
I got no real I.D.
But I say that I got one
to pass through the agencies

But no one really knows
That I like CD’s
Like the rapping one’s
And the Hip-Hop one’s.

And then someone knows
that I got no RID
probably from the agencies
But it’s too late!
I passed those stupid agencies!
Into another country-ry-ry-ry…

And when I come home,
I see a little tree,
A little Christmas tree,
Standing all alone,
In my living room,
And then I know,
That my real place is
home-ome-ome.

clearly, it’s a poetic and somewhat metaphorical approach to the immigrant experience with an emphasis on the demands of paperwork, addressing the issues of identity and the definition of home in a culturally complex environment. right? or maybe he just wants to be sure we get a tree?