12.31.15
my younger sister and her husband left the lower east side for the airport a few hours ago; their carrier decided to push their flight to los angeles forward half an hour, she tells me, so they just made it to the plane before the gate closed. surrounded by little piles of our now-crispy christmas tree's needles, i'm drinking coffee from a skull-shaped mug and planning my last few errands of 2015: a trip to the bank to replace the debit card i had to cancel after some year-end identity theft. a walk up to union square to look for my friend's just-published book. a few miles on the treadmill with my octogenarian neighbors. prep for tomorrow's polar bear plunge out at coney island. years don't mind ending, but my heart always goes out to them, whatever they are, anyway, since loving or hating them is much more straightforward than loving or hating myself. you did your best most of the time, 2015. here's the dreamless sleep.
12.22.15
san francisco, 0630: my old-timey alarm clock brayed at me to get out of the factory just as my sister and brother-in-law's sang them a futuristic awakening song in the next room. we pulled on an assortment of synthetic fabrics, took turns making coffee with their single-cup dripper, and set out across the bay bridge for a trail race down in alameda county. none of us had heard of the race before i found it on a california roundup calendar, and it was my first trail run; i imagined something like the mudder they'd done a year ago. in practice it was more civilized than my last half marathon had been: no more than a hundred runners at our distance, and they spread out over the first couple of miles. it felt a bit like we three were alone. we followed trail flags along a creek to the mouth of a shallow canyon, executing a little curlicue at the end. my hands sweltered in my skeleton gloves, so i passed them to my sister. a vulture hunched on a fence post around mile 4; a snow-white pelican paddled around down in the creek around mile 5. volunteers beneath a pavilion at the finish line covered picnic tables with paper plates of trail mix, torn peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, haphazard piles of pumpkin pie. a little bluetooth speaker played mid-'90s cure singles, and the late-morning sun burned away the fog.
12.18.15
best wishes from somewhere above the midwest, internets, where the air is pressurized, my rowmates are sleeping fitfully (left) and reading an old dutch mystery (right),* and the woman across the aisle a row ahead of us appears to be hand-sewing a heavy damask window treatment in shades of green. i don't know that i can get behind long transmissions from planes - writing on scraps from my purse feels more respectable, and we should all be unreachable every now and again - but i have let my fear of neglecting my new frankencareer guilt me away from my own blog. in truth it's a comparatively healthy frankencareer, with stupendous peoplewatching and bird-kissing and even an occasional check, but i need to build social writing back into my life. i've also been thinking about a short story, and some installation art. team, i might even finish my stag beetle needlepoint, or finally start drawing on the kitchen wall. the social writing comes first, though. wherever it is - minnesota, maybe - seat 20B loves you.
*i introduced joe to the old dutch mysteries - that is, janwillem van de wetering's 'amsterdam cops' books - but he has fixated on them because the younger cop has a siamese cat (oliver kwong). like joe, the cop squeezes purrs from said cat. "oliver sleeps between his feet, too," joe reports.
*i introduced joe to the old dutch mysteries - that is, janwillem van de wetering's 'amsterdam cops' books - but he has fixated on them because the younger cop has a siamese cat (oliver kwong). like joe, the cop squeezes purrs from said cat. "oliver sleeps between his feet, too," joe reports.
12.13.15
the woman sitting in front of us at the flick had a hairy-eared little dog, a salacious b. crumb, in an airport duffel in the seat beside her. when joe was in the bathroom, i leaned forward: "does he see a lot of theatre with you?" "to the ballet, to all kinds of shows, oh, he comes everywhere with me," she said. was he a papillon? "papillons are the second-smartest dogs; poodles are the smartest. when i heard i was going to get a service dog i expected something big, i had always had huskies, they sent me ace here and i thought, what am i going to do with this little thing?" he had been trained to alert her to the presence of kiwi; she was deathly, anaphylactically allergic, and she'd had a heart attack, so she couldn't handle epinephrine in the event of a kiwi sneak. ace had signaled at a salad of hers in a restaurant, a salad that hadn't had kiwi at all, and she asked the kitchen to look again, to be sure that he wasn't registering false positives. kiwi juice in the dressing! she told me he wanted to say hello—guide dogs for, say, the blind aren't supposed to interact with strangers, but some medical alert dogs can—and i offered him the back of my hand. we call steve salacious b. crumb because he has that high-pitched, mildly malevolent trill; ace was just a gentle licker, his little eyes bright under the house lights, down and up for the end of intermission.
12.07.15
venice is a half-drowned labyrinth, a noble pile of bones, a favorite piece of costume jewelry that turns your wrist green; in late autumn you feel like its only witness and it's the closest you've been to a waking dream, iceland, forgive me. venice is the only part of italy that has ever mattered to me (italy, forgive me); blame henry james for that, maybe, or the dragon asleep at the bottom of the grand canal. i knew for sure that i needed to go when i learned that it is sinking, the acqua alta more fearsome every year. look at that piazza and tell me you don't want to save san marco, or to wave, at least, as the siroccos sweep him under the winter sea.
i decided to give up on not having a tattoo for the black cat i lost and to have one instead. my sister drew him for me, and i sent the drawing to marco, another marco, whose partner spoke enough english to direct me to their gold plaque on an old door around the corner from the old opera house in campo san fantin—la fenice, the phoenix, which burned down in 1774, 1836, and 1996, because of course it did. marco asked if i wanted him to tattoo around a freckle on my back, since if he covered it with ink i wouldn't know if it changed shape and became cancerous one day; he was covering it with a cat who died of cancer, though, and things will happen where they will, now won't they. his english opened up when i complimented the jerry lee lewis he was playing: "he's better than elvis." we're both fans of black metal. "it doesn't matter what language it's in, it's all raaaaugh raaaaugh raaaaugh. i liked that word you used, freckle, it sounds like freak."
venice is a shared secret, dead quiet as you carry your weeping new tattoo over its bridges, down its alleys, like a cartoon character shot through with a cannonball. you always, always drink from the guttering fountains in the twilit squares. you sing old david bowie songs with a leathery regular at the other end of a bar. you visit your sister's handiwork at the biennale, resisting the urge to brag about the original on your back. you don't see a car for five days.
i decided to give up on not having a tattoo for the black cat i lost and to have one instead. my sister drew him for me, and i sent the drawing to marco, another marco, whose partner spoke enough english to direct me to their gold plaque on an old door around the corner from the old opera house in campo san fantin—la fenice, the phoenix, which burned down in 1774, 1836, and 1996, because of course it did. marco asked if i wanted him to tattoo around a freckle on my back, since if he covered it with ink i wouldn't know if it changed shape and became cancerous one day; he was covering it with a cat who died of cancer, though, and things will happen where they will, now won't they. his english opened up when i complimented the jerry lee lewis he was playing: "he's better than elvis." we're both fans of black metal. "it doesn't matter what language it's in, it's all raaaaugh raaaaugh raaaaugh. i liked that word you used, freckle, it sounds like freak."
venice is a shared secret, dead quiet as you carry your weeping new tattoo over its bridges, down its alleys, like a cartoon character shot through with a cannonball. you always, always drink from the guttering fountains in the twilit squares. you sing old david bowie songs with a leathery regular at the other end of a bar. you visit your sister's handiwork at the biennale, resisting the urge to brag about the original on your back. you don't see a car for five days.
12.02.15
Meeting in the Piazza on the evening of my arrival a young American painter who told me that he had been spending the summer just where I found him, I could have assaulted him for very envy. He was painting forsooth the interior of St. Mark's. To be a young American painter unperplexed by the mocking, elusive soul of things and satisfied with their wholesome light-bathed surface and shape; keen of eye; fond of colour, of sea and sky and anything that may chance between them; of old lace and old brocade and old furniture (even when made to order); of time-mellowed harmonies on nameless canvases and happy contours in cheap old engravings; to spend one's mornings in still, productive analysis of the clustered shadows of the Basilica, one's afternoons anywhere, in church or campo, on canal or lagoon, and one's evenings in star-light gossip at Florian's, feeling the sea-breeze throb languidly between the two great pillars of the Piazzetta and over the low black domes of the church—this, I consider, is to be as happy as is consistent with the preservation of reason.
(henry james, from "from venice to strassburg," 1873)
11.12.15
conversations with doctor omnibus {ghost forest edition}
doc: what's new?
LMO: i'm still freelancing. and i'm going to italy tomorrow.
doc: [halfhearted shrug]
LMO: what's new with you?
doc: at my age? nothing. what would be new with me?
LMO: have you read anything good lately?
doc: i don't read.
LMO: surely you read.
doc: what would i read?
LMO: novels, nonfiction?
doc: isn't what i do here nonfiction?
LMO: you've been to italy, i imagine.
doc: never. i have no interest. look this up: N-E-S-K-O-W-I-N. on your smartphone. look it up now.
LMO: [taps at phone] oregon! that's where your daughter lives, right?
doc: i don't know where my daughter lives.
LMO: it's beautiful, this beach.
doc: it's very hard to get to, and there are no people there. that's where i go. there's a ghost forest, two thousand years old, it's coming out of the ocean now.
doc: what's new?
LMO: i'm still freelancing. and i'm going to italy tomorrow.
doc: [halfhearted shrug]
LMO: what's new with you?
doc: at my age? nothing. what would be new with me?
LMO: have you read anything good lately?
doc: i don't read.
LMO: surely you read.
doc: what would i read?
LMO: novels, nonfiction?
doc: isn't what i do here nonfiction?
LMO: you've been to italy, i imagine.
doc: never. i have no interest. look this up: N-E-S-K-O-W-I-N. on your smartphone. look it up now.
LMO: [taps at phone] oregon! that's where your daughter lives, right?
doc: i don't know where my daughter lives.
LMO: it's beautiful, this beach.
doc: it's very hard to get to, and there are no people there. that's where i go. there's a ghost forest, two thousand years old, it's coming out of the ocean now.
11.06.15
we released a red-tailed hawk from the bird hospital today—not the gigantic female we had last week, but a male who'd tumbled out of the sky with a terrible scream. raptors are territorial, and this one ended up in our care after losing a turf war. he fell right at someone's feet, R said. i heard her presentation to the donors and birdwatchers who'd assembled in the lobby for the release as i bustled around the isolation ward in a crap-spattered gown; i hadn't planned on heading out to central park myself, but one of the staffers took my gown and place and pushed me out the door after the back of the column. we headed east into the trees just north of where joe and i turn in for shakespeare every summer. a woman stood at the edge of the path with a sharpied FREE HUGS sign, and someone from our group lurched over to embrace her. "thank you," she said. "thank you."
it felt wrong to catch all the way up to R, though i didn't know anyone else; she was practicing her magic at the column's head, pointing out the birds wheeling above us (hawks, so we had to head south) and telling stories about patients. i ended up beside a woman—maybe the one from the hug?—who told me that one of her two cats died a few days ago under anesthesia for a routine dental. "he was two and a half," she said. "it was a mistake to take him in, i made a mistake, but i could tell his teeth were hurting him." i told her she'd done the right thing with the information she'd had, and we kept going south.
it felt wrong to catch all the way up to R, though i didn't know anyone else; she was practicing her magic at the column's head, pointing out the birds wheeling above us (hawks, so we had to head south) and telling stories about patients. i ended up beside a woman—maybe the one from the hug?—who told me that one of her two cats died a few days ago under anesthesia for a routine dental. "he was two and a half," she said. "it was a mistake to take him in, i made a mistake, but i could tell his teeth were hurting him." i told her she'd done the right thing with the information she'd had, and we kept going south.
11.02.15
the dirty dozen {notes from my hometown police blotter, as reported by the oc register*}
Keep the peace. 9:26 a.m. The caller with the homeowners association reported trying to return items to a resident from a storage pod, but said the resident is refusing to open the door.
Illegal peddling. 8:23 p.m. The caller reported a man soliciting for a teen challenge.
Suspicious person in vehicle. 10:09 p.m. A caller said a person vomited outside a parked black car.
Stolen vehicle. 2:30 p.m. The caller reported her car stolen last night. When asked why she didn’t report it sooner, she said she thought they would return it or come back because she knows who took it.
Citizen assist. 7:35 a.m. A woman said she found a nude photograph of herself posted on her car and she believed her ex-husband placed the picture on there.
Disturbance. 7:38 a.m. The caller said her 16-year-old daughter refused to go to school.
Citizen assist. 12:36 a.m. The caller said his neighbor is yelling at his dogs to stop barking.
Suspicious person/circumstances. 9:48 a.m. The caller reported a purse with a gold emblem on the bus bench.
Disturbance. 2:17 a.m. The caller reported several people fighting in the bike lane area.
Citizen assist. 7:35 p.m. A man said he wanted to report his gardener’s poor work to sheriff’s deputies in case he started tearing out plants in retaliation for being fired.
Suspicious person/circumstances. 5:37 p.m. A caller complained about a woman walking through the neighborhood, filming herself.
Suspicious person/circumstances. 9:38 p.m. The caller said he thinks he’ll be hit by a car.
*previous installment here.
Keep the peace. 9:26 a.m. The caller with the homeowners association reported trying to return items to a resident from a storage pod, but said the resident is refusing to open the door.
Illegal peddling. 8:23 p.m. The caller reported a man soliciting for a teen challenge.
Suspicious person in vehicle. 10:09 p.m. A caller said a person vomited outside a parked black car.
Stolen vehicle. 2:30 p.m. The caller reported her car stolen last night. When asked why she didn’t report it sooner, she said she thought they would return it or come back because she knows who took it.
Citizen assist. 7:35 a.m. A woman said she found a nude photograph of herself posted on her car and she believed her ex-husband placed the picture on there.
Disturbance. 7:38 a.m. The caller said her 16-year-old daughter refused to go to school.
Citizen assist. 12:36 a.m. The caller said his neighbor is yelling at his dogs to stop barking.
Suspicious person/circumstances. 9:48 a.m. The caller reported a purse with a gold emblem on the bus bench.
Disturbance. 2:17 a.m. The caller reported several people fighting in the bike lane area.
Citizen assist. 7:35 p.m. A man said he wanted to report his gardener’s poor work to sheriff’s deputies in case he started tearing out plants in retaliation for being fired.
Suspicious person/circumstances. 5:37 p.m. A caller complained about a woman walking through the neighborhood, filming herself.
Suspicious person/circumstances. 9:38 p.m. The caller said he thinks he’ll be hit by a car.
*previous installment here.
10.28.15
a girl i didn't know approached me at the glass case beside the front door to ye olde charity bookstore cafe this afternoon. she introduced herself as a fellow volunteer and said that she had to venture out into the rain for a job interview; could she perhaps borrow one of the umbrellas on the floor behind me? i asked her if she would be coming back—i'd promised to meet someone at a press event in midtown after my shift—and she said yes. i warned her that my umbrella—minty, the feral kid—was a bit ratty.
a man in a blazer then paused at the counter between the register and an old computer. this was his first time in this corner of the world ("not the center of the world, this corner of the world") and he had a week's worth of time to spend. he had explored a bit and concluded that we were in a place in which he could spend a lot of time, even though our cafe tables lacked chess boards. he was from oslo. where were our books on chess?
the volunteer returned a few hours later, her hair wild from the last of the storm, and thanked me for minty. the interview had gone well, she said.
a man in a blazer then paused at the counter between the register and an old computer. this was his first time in this corner of the world ("not the center of the world, this corner of the world") and he had a week's worth of time to spend. he had explored a bit and concluded that we were in a place in which he could spend a lot of time, even though our cafe tables lacked chess boards. he was from oslo. where were our books on chess?
the volunteer returned a few hours later, her hair wild from the last of the storm, and thanked me for minty. the interview had gone well, she said.
10.23.15
i discovered a prepper thread on consuming expired crackers when i took to the internet after joe and i each ate a 37-year-old saltine from a tin i bought for my birthday a few years ago. it's pretty great.
in unrelated news, my friend V noted as we priced inventory at ye olde charity bookstore cafe yesterday afternoon that a bright pink shrink-wrapped volume was called "don't behead the concubines" (in german). should we have unwrapped it to figure out what it was? nah, we decided. we then spoke of unwieldy compound german words—i've long been fascinated with vergangenheitsbewältigung, or coming to terms with the past—and V talked about how she and her partner would mutter strange phrases at each other when they ran their cinema in the british virgin islands, because the locals found the sound of their speech delightful. she rolled out one of her favorite semi-onomatopoeic tongue-twisters, konstantinopolitanischer dudelsackpfeifemachergeselle; it means "person from istanbul who's apprenticed to a man who makes bagpipes." (i begged her to write it down for me.)
speaking of german, we are going to the opera on tuesday; we shall see tannhäuser. i have never been to the opera, and though our friend kevin, arranger of and companion on the opera adventure, assures us that extreme fanciness is not compulsory, i am making my hair extra-purple at this very moment in preparation; i plan to wear a black lace proenza schouler dress i found at the thrift store two doors down from ye olde charity bookstore cafe and a '50s black velvet wrap coat i found on our road trip to pittsburgh. the man who sold it to me is somewhat infamous on yelp for being prickly to his customers, but he and i were old pals as soon as i complimented him on his signed morrissey poster; we traded stories about show cancellations and mozzer's heart-shaped sweat patches. probably most people can manage a heart-shaped sweat patch with proper provocation.
*she survived, and is now helming the new york public library. onward! upward!
Now: I expected them to be Stale in some way, shape or form. But what I got was a *real* surprise.
[...]
"I tasted one (of the crackers) and let me tell you that 44-year-old crackers don't taste so good," Weinshall* said."It tasted like cardboard."
[...]
When the SHTF, I'm hoping my canned Mountain House crackers are tasty with my canned butter!
[...]
Canned crackers will out last a cockroach, I've eaten old C & K ration crackers 30-40 years old and they were still good.
[...]
I've had very good success with Ginger cookies. These are only $1.00 a bag a the Dollar Store, and I've been canning them in mason canning jars with a oxygen absorber and a rice packet (moisture). Then this summer I opened up one that'd been canned a little over two years ago and I've got to tell you (everyone agreed!!!) that canning it somehow made it taste BETTER. Those were the best cookies I think I've ever had.
in unrelated news, my friend V noted as we priced inventory at ye olde charity bookstore cafe yesterday afternoon that a bright pink shrink-wrapped volume was called "don't behead the concubines" (in german). should we have unwrapped it to figure out what it was? nah, we decided. we then spoke of unwieldy compound german words—i've long been fascinated with vergangenheitsbewältigung, or coming to terms with the past—and V talked about how she and her partner would mutter strange phrases at each other when they ran their cinema in the british virgin islands, because the locals found the sound of their speech delightful. she rolled out one of her favorite semi-onomatopoeic tongue-twisters, konstantinopolitanischer dudelsackpfeifemachergeselle; it means "person from istanbul who's apprenticed to a man who makes bagpipes." (i begged her to write it down for me.)
speaking of german, we are going to the opera on tuesday; we shall see tannhäuser. i have never been to the opera, and though our friend kevin, arranger of and companion on the opera adventure, assures us that extreme fanciness is not compulsory, i am making my hair extra-purple at this very moment in preparation; i plan to wear a black lace proenza schouler dress i found at the thrift store two doors down from ye olde charity bookstore cafe and a '50s black velvet wrap coat i found on our road trip to pittsburgh. the man who sold it to me is somewhat infamous on yelp for being prickly to his customers, but he and i were old pals as soon as i complimented him on his signed morrissey poster; we traded stories about show cancellations and mozzer's heart-shaped sweat patches. probably most people can manage a heart-shaped sweat patch with proper provocation.
*she survived, and is now helming the new york public library. onward! upward!
10.12.15
in the closest brush with the methods of marie "life-changing magic of tidying up" kondo i'll likely ever have,* i've been reading and divesting myself of books i brought home from the office and shelved years ago. one, a jack nicholson biography, gets rolling with some bleak notes about his love life:
speaking of head colds, i ran a half marathon with one yesterday! that was alright when we were scrambling to get up, out of the house, and down to the staten island ferry before the sun came up; as when i worked in an office and had to train in the morning before heading there, i was so sleepy and groggy that i barely registered the inelegance of the hour. coughing my way across staten island was less of a treat, but i can blame my unimpressive time on illness instead of the late nights i spent writing and concertgoing last week, and that's something. either way, i have a medal and the reptilian contentment that accompanies it. i don't think less is more, as warhol said; more is better.****
*unless you count when my thoughtful friend lesley konmari'ed the living daylights out of her place in brooklyn and i inherited a bunch of her clothes, which was indeed magical.
**(the year in which nicholson learned that the woman he'd believed to be his sister was actually his mother, and that his "mother" was in fact his grandmother)
***as in as good as it gets, for which he won one of his three oscars.
****..."big paintings cost more than little paintings, and magazines pay by the word."
After 1974,** with one or two exceptions,*** [Nicholson] never played a purely romantic lead. And in real life, while women continued to be a source of both pleasure and pain for him, true love was something he could never fully accept, believe, or trust from them. His seventeen-year relationship with Anjelica Huston, the woman able to get closest to him, was a series of hellos and good-byes, angers, frustrations, and, on both their parts, infidelities strewn throughout their time together. It is significant that in the end they both wound up alone.i just finished anjelica huston's second memoir, is the thing; she was widowed in 2008 when her husband of 16 years (the sculptor robert graham) died of a horrible blood disease. in the absence of this weird month-spanning head cold i'd yell about bad biographers here for awhile; instead i will but say that it's a shame i can't leave books unfinished, and that i'll try to spark joy in you by following up with additional sins as i read them.
speaking of head colds, i ran a half marathon with one yesterday! that was alright when we were scrambling to get up, out of the house, and down to the staten island ferry before the sun came up; as when i worked in an office and had to train in the morning before heading there, i was so sleepy and groggy that i barely registered the inelegance of the hour. coughing my way across staten island was less of a treat, but i can blame my unimpressive time on illness instead of the late nights i spent writing and concertgoing last week, and that's something. either way, i have a medal and the reptilian contentment that accompanies it. i don't think less is more, as warhol said; more is better.****
*unless you count when my thoughtful friend lesley konmari'ed the living daylights out of her place in brooklyn and i inherited a bunch of her clothes, which was indeed magical.
**(the year in which nicholson learned that the woman he'd believed to be his sister was actually his mother, and that his "mother" was in fact his grandmother)
***as in as good as it gets, for which he won one of his three oscars.
****..."big paintings cost more than little paintings, and magazines pay by the word."
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