06.30.02


we have reached the beginning of the high season. in lieu of buggies and parasols taking turns around the park, we have clots of hefty tourists in matching tees, just waiting for me to nudge them down lombard street with the car's snout. gay pride week is in full swing as well - i haven't run across any of the weekend's parades, but i've had the pleasure of walking through some especially robust piles of festivity-garbage downtown. already nostalgic for early summer fog. joe's parents will see the apartment for the first time next weekend, so i'll spend the next several days seesawing between second drafts and coaxing mildew from the ceiling.


vacation reading:


whites, norman rush - a series of tight, fleshy little pieces. i finished a few stories before realizing that minor characters were popping up to narrate later; once i was up to speed, the collection held together like an episodic novel. quite satisfying, though i've grown so fond of rush's confidence with setting that i'm all the more annoyed with his lack of recent work.


lewis carroll: a biography, martin n. cohen - a long, romantic apology for a sad man's habit of photographing nude girl-children, and an exhaustive record of his persnickety/obscure satires and letters. celibacy is a key premise here: unluckily, someone located the missing racy bits of LC's journal shortly after cohen's biography hit the presses. crap - i think we were all ready to set the subject aside.


my war gone by, i miss it so, anthony loyd - i discovered this when loyd materialized in my bookstore wanting to autograph his stuff. it sat on the shelf for a year because i made an asinine comment to him about the cover photograph (it's affecting, but one shouldn't really like it) and i've been trying to heal and forget. he's a very capable and unapologetically personal war correspondent, and he does a fair job of unsnarling bosnian politics. i'm shocked by how young, how normal he seemed last year - reading some of this fucked with my sleep.

06.28.02


bless us, i've started writing poetry again! it's pretty questionable stuff so far, but listen, i hadn't been able to slap more than a few lines together since june of 2000. this is running the old pipes for a while, forgiving the rust and waiting for the water to come clean. we like cinquains and triolets so far, closed forms like hangers for our clothes. we're feeling a bit better. still wearing yoga pants around the apartment, but better.

06.23.02


i took a leave of absence at the beginning of the month. i'd been getting sick, and i thought that solid rest would get me back to the office sooner than a smattering of sick days. after four visits to the doctor, i spent a week in southern california.


reacted horribly to medication, gagged and twitched through most waking hours. left the house twice for coffee with my father, once with mom to buy flowers for my sister's birthday, once to the movies. lost ten pounds. came back.


more doctors' visits, nurses' apologies for side effects, eventually new meds. long talks with joe, another (much better) trip south for joanna's high school graduation. more sleep, a hair cut, some world cup games. we got back last night.


the good news is that i think i know what's up: june has been an intensely physical version of head-things i've ignored for too long. i'm squirming with envy as jake packs up his life and moves to pennsylvania for grad school - i assumed i'd spend my twenties mastering new cities and new day jobs, but i've made excuses for staying here and exhausting the novelty of my stint at work. i want to learn and explore, and that seems unlikely here.


paul, in turn, has the self-discipline i lack. i know that i want an MFA, that i want to publish, and i haven't done any of the writing to get there. i sit on the porch with a notebook for hours on end - nothing. that needs to change.


the few people who know about my month of shit have told me that i'm in a terrible state for decisions, that i should wait and think. i've spent three weeks looking for gold at the bottom of my navel and hoping to feel good about going outside. bored as hell. suspicious of faux epiphanies. throwing up a lot.


the compromise seems to be my mother's place in davis. i could look for new work, save money, steel myself for a bigger move without friendly faces at the end. getting the hell out of san francisco seems important - i need to be sure that the place is poisonous for me, or that i've blamed it for my mental state without cause.


that's it, so far. i'm very unhappy, and kind of scared, but things are going to change.

05.31.02 science!


kudos to ms. gaw for pointing out 10 reasons why x is better than y. justification generators make us happy, and they work so well with yesterday's paragraphs -

10 reasons why marriage is better than rotting alone.


10. marriage is ubiquitous in shadow
9. you can have as many marriages as you can handle
8. a frigid marriage is a good marriage
7. marriage's nemesis: an omnipotent malevolent being. rotting alone's nemesis: a beer-bellied liar
6. marriage doesn't suddenly grab you and take you to other places
5. your marriage never leaves the house after 9pm
4. to capture marriage, you need a real trap. to capture rotting alone, you say: "hey, captain, here's a pit" and push him in
3. rotting alone never said "abandon ship! all hands abandon ship!" because he was already out of there at the first hint of trouble
2. marriage doesn't turn your bathroom into a library
1. "i'd rather be his whore than your wife" just doesn't have the same sting as "i'd rather kiss a wookie."

on pairings, i passed the afternoon making a tape for the car. the ensuing test drive was marvelous - who knew "unloveable" (the smiths) would complement "sweet caroline" (the langley schools music project) so well? "the killing moon" (echo & the bunnymen) / "beast of burden" (the rolling stones) - my word! and annie's dehydrated macaroni and cheese is heavenly when mixed with soymilk. take this, america, and use it well.

05.30.02 two kinds of people


high school's deborah threw a lovely wedding at a ranch in sonoma on sunday. i knew i'd bump into old familiars, but their sheer volume was shocking - what with the grown-up clothes, the reception tables, the tentative dance floor, it felt a bit like model united nations. kept caucus references to a minimum; i'm thinking most people don't romanticize debate conferences like i do. the ranchers had a golem made of barrels, tires, galoshes - oh, it would be pleasant to have a digital camera. a friend's husband had a splendid talk with joe about the virtues of marriage - best thing that ever happened to me, my wife is my queen, and so on. joe had a gazebo-induced meltdown when we tried to plan a ritual of our own a few years ago. it's good for him to see happy survivors, ceremonies that aren't heavy and stilted.


mom, via the mom information channels, reports that we were a hit with the home-friends at the wedding, which is to say that i dressed like a normal person and joe was a fabulous fellow. i'm pleased that he charms everyone, but extroverts make me feel terribly inadequate. sweet, sweet walls of the darkened apartment.

05.24.02 its light green lipstick on our faces


the aforementioned neighbors are moving this weekend, and monster ballads ring their departure down the stairs. given a choice, i wouldn't have myself living upstairs or my uncle* as a landlord, either. also their new digs are supposedly eighteen times larger than their place now. i'll wave a hankie.


i can make one dish, and it is condensed soup. no cans involved, i chop and saute and simmer, all the good stuff - it just ends up condensed, which is actually very convenient for storage purposes. it's possible that creating complicated fresh food intimidates me, that i've modified prepackaged and dehydrated stuff for so long that i've developed a comfort zone. it's great soup, anyway. i think joe would eat it without the threat of a guilt trip.


if you plan on challenging paul to a tacky website duel, make sure he doesn't have a picture of blonde you in an ugly pink dress with a white britney spears pumpkin on your head. you could start getting tipsy e-mail from people in vermont, and then where would you be?

BAY LEAF DIVINATION
To receive an answer to a yes-or-no question, ask your question aloud while holding a bay leaf to a candle flame. If the leaf crackles while burning, the answer is yes. If the leaf bubbles or makes a squeaking noise, the answer is no.

* when one of the apartments is empty, said uncle buys a fake shrub for the hallway to impress prospective tenants. he leaves the tag on the planter so that he can return it when he finds someone.

05.22.02 where oft i sate


mom bought a house in davis this weekend. if my memory of the town and her description of the place are accurate, i think she'll love it - i know that she's wanted to live in northern california for a long time, and i'll be seeing a lot more of her in years to come.


i spasm a little at losing the house in laguna hills. i haven't really lived there for seven years, but my childhood nightmares were always about moving - my parents found that place when i was a year old. i planted my hands in the patio cement, walk of fame style, when i was a toddler - i would knock my wind out climbing and jumping down from the stairs for hours at a time - our first christmas tree sprawls across the corner of the yard now.


this may be one of the last stages of accepting my parents' divorce. it should have come months and months ago - feeling like a little kid, thinking only of threats to home and habits - but i made an unconscious point of reacting like an adult first.


i'll be glad for this feeling - backward or forward, it could mean that the cycle is complete. goodbye, house. i loved you.

05.20.02 for oodles and oodles


lovely, blustery weather carried over from yesterday morning. grey sky, moist air, people fighting their clothing up and down the street. my anxieties save themselves for the sun.


i was on the fence about shelling out for spider-man, but seeing bruce campbell on the big screen, bit part or no, was a joy - he appeared to have resigned himself to television when we heard him speak on halloween. sam raimi should remember him when the sequels start rolling in. as for the rest of it - leaps and bounds in special effects are a mixed bag. i'd trim a few milliseconds of the rubbery tarzan scenes in times square and invest in materials for kirsten dunst's stylist - red hair calls for new makeup. i'd also have liked to see tobey maguire hold on to his underoos from the early scenes. elements of mexican wrestling are few and far between in summer blockbusters, and why should that be so?


i miss southern california movie rituals. i paid a lot of money to see a lot of stupid films back in the day, and they were worth every penny - maybe runoff from hollywood contaminates the ground water, maybe i grew up stunted in such a way that i could sit through anything and feel that it was religious. the man who wasn't there was fine the other night, but it sucked in comparison to star trek 7 in high school. what the hell?

05.18.02 and you can't sing


still trying to plan another vacation. i'm far too poor to do anything now, but limited means work in my favor: as i can't pop to seattle for the weekend, i may as well sock away for something spanking in the distant future. buns day in iceland, for example -

Children especially love Buns Day because they get to wake up early to try to catch their parents still in bed. If they do, they "beat" them out of bed with their individually made Bolluvondur or "Bun Wands," which are colorfully decorated with strips of paper and gleaming ribbon.

or christmas in reykjavik -

When days are short, beloved folklore adds to the mystique and glories of Christmas in Iceland, so while American children dream of sugarplums and Santa Claus, little ones in Iceland are tantalized by visions of Gully Gawk, Window Peeper, Bowl Licker, Pot Scraper, Door Slammer - among others.

or the iceland airwaves festival - i have a theme, is the point, and will set about getting an empty water cooler jug for my spare quarters. i must go.


the argument has been that don delillo peoples his novels with minidelillos, and i'm afraid that great jones street bears it out. individual passages are entertaining, even poetic, but plot and characters - pish! i'm appreciating libra in retrospect, as the kennedy assassination stuff prodded the story along.

Just make sure you don't call it art. It's not art. It's back to before art. Fire-building and the fingering of testicles. The wonder of pre-information is that men perceived the earth and themselves actually in the process of changing. Zenko's been trying to create pressure along a fault with a series of very delicate TNT explosions. Just a few more in the right places and he'll have his small quake. The greatest work of art ever achieved. Except don't call it art.

i begin to understand what i mustn't do, and that is something.

05.17.02 your comical rage


a muddy little angst-cloud putters around the television set. it's joe's everest, after a fashion - he will watch it because it's there, and i can't blame him for wanting his life back. i still think that a bit of roughage belongs in one's cultural diet, though, and i want to watch rental movies. he mentions that we could move it to the bedroom, but i am too proud for that - i'm perfectly comfortable smoking on the porch in my underwear, but watching television in bed carries a special kind of shame.


a friend, an elderly technician at the hospital, has a karaoke machine tucked behind his front door; visitors need to sing to gain admittance to the house. i may work something similar into our entry rituals - a chalk board for haiku, maybe, or orders to perform a festive dance.


on the recent discussion of great closing lines, i would mention kerouac's dharma bums (a sentimental favorite) -

Then I added "Blah," with a little grin, because I knew that shack and that mountain would understand what that meant, and turned and went on down the trail back to this world.

05.10.02 surrounded by demons it's fantastic


the big cat and i have developed a tight little routine to get me to the office in the morning. when i limp to the bathroom he's already perched on the sink, cued with my alarm clock to play pat-a-cake through the shower curtain. when i open the door from the porch to the kitchen, i can hear his nails at the ladder on the other side: when i cross the threshold, he's at eye level, ready to straighten my hair. after i reset the alarm, he's in position on the coffee table for his last scritch. smart beast.


pretended i was rich today, picked up luna's romantica AND rasputina's cabin fever. j. notes that "rememories", from the former, sounds a lot like van halen; i can't stop tittering over rasputina's "pj + vincent & matthew + bjork". music pleases.


i am an active girl this week, as i am trying to avoid finishing mating in a single sitting. more on it soon, but sweet merciful crap is it ever good.

05.07.02 he will wait until


i've developed an almost excruciating sensitivity to light. with a single exception, i haven't driven the freeway after dark in six months - oncoming headlights spread so fantastically that i can't read exit signs. i favor teensy editions for my lunch break reading, as sitting in the sun only works if i can shade the pages with my head. longer hair has been helpful. i spoke to an optometrist who swore up and down that i have perfect vision; i think he sensed that i wore glasses without lenses in college. i also think he's a fucker.


new at work:
dachshunds won't vomit!
cats will nurse anything!
cosmetic testicles!


donnie darko disturbed me. i still can't handle the filmic bunnymen thing that's going around, and the therapy sequences reminded me that i was hypnotized at grad nite in high school. i took it in stride at the time - honestly, i spoke and danced more in that half hour than i did in the four previous years - but it creeps the hell out of me in retrospect. no rabbits, no trances in the movies for a while.