April 2004

April 1 2004 Did you know The Restaurant is coming back? I will admit I fell out of love with it after awhile. Too much production. Too much product placement. But I'm psyched that it's coming back. And the story is that the restaurant is failing financially and the money guy is going to replace Rocco with managers!!! And really. When  you read the word mangers you should imagine the shark music from Jaws. I just can't wait to see how this goes.

My evolution was brief. I'm back to slithering reptile status. Was it something I said? Or didn't say.

Ari was at yoga. And then I got to hang out with her the rest of the day. Which was very fun. We ate lunch and then went to her apartment to watch the tape of Starting Over. I can not believe I watch this show. I can not believe how caught up in the show I am. I can not believe how wound up I get. We kept hitting pause so we could do our own analysis. Fun. And yet. Completely loopy.

Then we went to a yarn store where I bought some yarn with the idea that I'd make something for Jan. It's very cool yarn. Maybe a little bit too cool. It's this kind. Maybe most like the #10 or #20 color wise. It's fuzzy yarn, so it's really hard to tell where the stitches are. And I got some other yarn for ... uh ... I don't know what. Equally fun. (Mine is the Babe Didrikson color and the Elaine style.) I haven't tried it yet. But I think I have terrible judgement in yarn. It's pretty but it might be way beyond my skill level. Maybe not. We'll see.

And then it was late and we were hungry again. So we went to dinner.

It was a really nice day. And I needed a nice day. But I spent money.

EEK.

I also sent some writing out. Which is good. Right?

Ai. Yi. Yi. I just feel so ... loopy.

Then I came home and wound the yarn into balls, which is the only time I feel like I know what I'm doing. And I wasn't even sure about that when I was winding the Babe Didrikson/Elaine yarn. It was in a big pile that felt like it was becoming tangled. But I kept soting it out. I'm in the middle of it now.

So March came in like a lion. And went out like a lamb. Coz I was buying wool. Get it?

Heh.

                                     9:14 AM

April 2 2004 When I was at the yarn store I bought some knitting needles. Because, as Cleis once said, all the cool girls are doing it. The fuzzy yarn is hard to crochet because the fuzziness hides the stitch. I'm hoping it's easier to knit. But. I don't know how to knit.

I have a book. But some how the English wasn't plain enough. It was this animation that got me going. I now have a row of stitches on a needle. I'm using old yard to figure it out. We'll see.

I finished the Morrison-a-thon. There are good and bad things about reading all of one author. It is possible, even with a great writer, to get sick of the sound of their voice. I'm not really sick of Morrison. But I'm ready to be reading someone else. Kristina is in a class on Camus so I'm reading in solidarity with her.

                                     9:35 AM

April 2 2004 I watched Oprah. I'm not sure why. She was doing a show about weight loss surgery and someone told me that she wasn't really for the surgery. I was curious. I knew there would be things that hurt me but I just ... oh ... I just watched anyway.

And she did not seem very pro the surgery. In fact, the show was pretty terse, in some ways. Of course Oprah gets extra props for doing it the right way. She over came her weak character, doncha know. If you go here and click on the contract that she signed you can read about her character. The contract in and of itself doesn't seem too weird until it gets to the part where she talks about the strength of her character.

I will always give Oprah her props. She's done some great things. But her generalizations about fat people piss me off. Watching her during this show I was torn. When the doctor compared being fat to having cancer Oprah seemed to want to say something about the inaccuracy of that comparison. But she didn't.

There was a sixteen year old girl on the show who had the surgery. A sixteen year old girl. It just makes me want to weep. Apparently she'd gone into her sister's journal and read the sister saying hate full things about her. She credits that experience with turning her around. No one said a word to the sister about the hate full thoughts. No one said a word about the girl being afraid to go to school because of the teasing.

That's always the hurt full part for me. The way those things don't get challenged.

Oprah really seemed to want to challenge the wisdom of the surgery. I wouldn't say the show was positive. She never really says don't do the surgery. But there are things on her site that really seem anti surgery. Pro pro pro weight loss. Always pro weight loss. It's exhausting.

After the show I was so spaced out I put chicken in the oven but never turned the oven on. It just all makes me very sad. And mad.

The tone of the show was very much about this being an extreme choice and not for everyone. But there was no counter argument. There was no one there with a different view. The doctor made me the most angry.

The doctor.

It was sad. It was frightening. It was infuriating. And if you ask me why I watched I can't tell you. There is a part of me that needs to know my enemy.

                                     8:00 PM

April 3 2004 There was a man sitting on the bridge yesterday. Threatening to jump. On the news they talked about how it was backing up traffic. There was something about that. It seemed so ... wrong headed. A human being. A life. And all anyone could talk about was the traffic.

To be fair, the traffic was news. It was taking three hours to get across the bridge. People were pissed. But there was this guy, sitting on a brige, cutting himself with a razor. They talked him off the bridge last night. Maybe there will be more news about why he was there.

People seem to be snapping.

                                     11:10 AM

April 3 2004 I. Um.  Hmm.

I heard the guy who started Found Magazine on This American Life talking about a trip to Brazil he took with his mom. They were there to seek healing from a "mystical healer." It was a very sweet. If you can listen to it, I recommend it.

Earlier I'd heard a women on West Coast Live talking about street retreats. I'd taken a shower and had a good yoga practice. Eaten some chicken salad. I was just beginning to feel a little bit better about it all.

But then I went back to my lethargy, self pity, and disaffection.

Actually I went back to trying to figure out knitting but I'm not quite getting there yet.

Heh.

I think I've only deleted comments a few times. Once when someone asked me to delete comments that they had left. Comments, good and bad, are part of the deal. Not everyone is going to get it. The meaner someone is when they try to tell me they know me better than I know myself the less it bothers me.

But it does bother me.

There are some pretty intense things going on in comment boxes these days. I tend to think there are limits to the dialogue we can have in comments boxes. Which is why we sometimes write to one another on our blogs. Those of us who write blogs.

I have lurked on blogs where I didn't like the person. Not often. Not regularly. There are a few people writing out here and they get linked to and I follow links. But I'm not looking for a fight.

Or. Ya know. Maybe I am. Sometimes.

I really don't know.

It is true. I am unemployed. I did take the risk, at forty-four years of age to quit a fairly high paying job and go to college. I did work my way through my BA by running a small business while holding down a full time class schedule. I worked fourteen hours a day for the better part of three and a half years. I began this blog in the days after I sold that business and began my MFA program. And now I am looking for work during a jobless economic recovery. Work that I have no experience doing.

Do I sound defensive? Well. Yeah. I am. It strikes me as extraordinarily mean spirited for someone to throw my unemployment into a list of judgements about who I am. Extraordinarily mean spirited.

But I think there's a difference between a troll and someone who is just in disagreement and judgement. So. Lurk. Comment. Believe that you know me. Really.

Generally. I believe in language. I believe in the power of telling our stories. I belive that writing is a way to reveal. But language has limits. And I have limits.

                                     10:17 PM

April 5 2004 So I went swimming. It was lovely. Good to be in the water. Then I came home, baked some banana muffins and ate some chicken salad.

My crafting life has been frustrating for me. It was beginning to seem like Jan might be graduating from college before I got anything made for him. I do know how to make granny squares but I wasn't sure the yarn would work. It's tightly wound in some places but loose in others. It's a little bit hard to work with and I thought it might make lumpy squares. It does. But they're kind of cool. I made two last night. I'm not sure how big to make each square. Right now they're each five rows. I might make them really big and just make six. Not sure.

I haven't listened to Air America yet. Gotta get on that.

I think the best idea is for me to let go of all the hish and move on. The comment support from my fellow codependants is much appreciated. But. You know I just want to ... mmmm.... get into it a bit more.

I am accused of being disaffected. And I suppose I am. I am disaffected from the culture in which bodies are tortured so that they can fit into a limited idea of beauty. Tortured on television. I am disaffected from people who make assumptions about me based on the size of my ass. I'm disaffected from a political system that's sold to the highest bidder. I'm disaffected from a country that doesn't value education. I'm disaffected from spiritual communities that want to make love wrong. The list is long. Oh. My. I am so disaffected.

Lethargic. Well yeah. Sometimes. After the six year push to get an education, writing a book, the last two Decembers with M & K, the death of my father, menopause. Yeah. I feel tired. Sometimes.

Self pity. I've never understood where the line gets drawn between telling the truth about things that hurt you and self pity. And then there's injustice. Whether or not you want to believe that fat people should eat less/exercise more and fall in line with the body Mafia's standard - job discrimination, lack of access to health care, means of transportation, public facilities and culturally encouraged scapegoating is not OK. It's just not. Do I fall into self pity around the events of my life and hostility of the world I live in? Yeah. I do. Sometimes.

We've already talked about my unemployment.

And a basic inablity to be honest.

Yes. Well.

My life doesn't track the Puritan's Pride, Manifest Destiny, Just Do It, American narrative. It's not something I feel too bad about.

I thought Rodrigo raised an interesting question. What is a troll?  Is Beth a troll? Welllll....we know she doesn't like Matha and Green weenies. We know she knows how to spell Neflix. It seems she feels I have too much support.  And then there's the e-mails to people who leave me comments. She seems to fit the profile. Palaver is a lovely word though, isn't it? You gotta give her that. And it's true that her comment brought on so many lovely comments from my fellow co dependants. I wouldn't hesitate to delete really stupid stuff. But she isn't stupid. She's just a bigot. I'm thinking about the letter to the editor idea. But I've written letters to the editor. The paper chooses which ones to publish. Someone who leaves peckish comments and then withdraws when she feels criticized is ... trollish. But that's part of the freedom of the blog form. I can delete her comments. I can ban her. But she exists. And she's let me know that she's lurking.

I dunno. It is time to let it go.

It's Monday. The moon is full. I'm going to make a cup of tea and ... well ... we'll see.

                                     8:15 AM

April 6 2004 My dreams have been filled with funny scenarios. Last night people were taking my laundry out and doing their own. There is a way in which that makes metaphoric sense given recent events. And then, in the dream, I found a drawer full of clean underwear so I realized I didn't need to do laundry. I do, actually, need to do laundry. But I'm not too worried about it. Things do can get competitive in our little apartment laundry room. But. Really. I think I'll be OK.

I was listening to Air America for a while yesterday. Today my speakers don't work. It's enough to make me wonder. I've checked the things I know how to check. In order to make sure they're plugged in I have to move about eighty pounds of books. Which. Obviously. I may have to do.

I'd read something Elayne linked to yesterday so I knew about the Daily Kos hoopla. I thought Markos was very good on The Majority Report. I don't read him very often. As I was listening I thought about how hard it's gonna be for me to give a shit about the election. I'll show up. Cast my vote for whoever I have to cast a vote for in order to get rid of Bush. But. John Kerry delinked a blogger? There's something about that. Something lacking proportion and courage.

I'm struggling a bit to get a post written. I got a chance to read a few of the e-mails that were sent to other people from my comments. It's nothing I could have controlled. But.

I'll shake it off.

                                     12:19 PM

April 7 2004 As it happened, someone did take my laundry out of the washer and out theirs in. Maybe I'm psychic.

But I got the laundry done. The garden around the laundry room is beautiful right now. And fragrant.

And my little plant dropped the three leaves and then formed two shoots with three leaves on each one. They are green and shiny.

My speakers came back on yesterday. And then went off again. And then came back on. I guess I have a loose wire.  

                                     9:04 AM

 April 7 2004 Right before I left for yoga I read Kurt. There was a lot to consider in the post. But one sentence was so satisfying for me to read.

It was that awareness of the limits of binary thinking. Yes. No. Good. Bad. It is the way that never really seems deeply meaningful, or even real. Lately I've been thinking about notions of right and wrong. I'm always suspicious when things seem to come down to right, or wrong. Things are rarely simple. I'm always looking for context.

There's a dry cleaners right in front of the bus stop where I wait. A woman pulled up in front and got out to get her dry cleaning. I've seen this before. The problem for me is that the bus can't get to me and if I get on out in the middle of the street I have to pull up to get to the relatively high steps. It can be a drag. There's a huge fine for parking in a bus stop. I found myself hoping she'd get a ticket. But I was also thinking about Kurt's post and answers which are provisional, subtle, layered, imbued with shades of meaning. And right. And wrong. As I watched she came out with an armload of clothes and then went back for more. It was clear that she was going to be hauling a lot and no wonder why she wanted to be right in front. She was there as the bus pulled up and I heard her say something about "your bus" so she knew what was going on. The driver was able to pull in behind her. I got on with no problem.

Sitting on the bus I mused about the all's well that ends well outcome. And I marveled at how angry I felt with her while I waited for the bus, worrying about a less positive outcome. She was, after all, wrong.

In class Sally was talking in terms of balance. She does that. It seems very natural. It's not like she plans it she just talks about what's on her mind. Or that's how it seems.  We were doing Tree pose. For the record, when I'm in tree pose I rest one heal on the other instep. My leg isn't up as far as it is that picture.

In class, Sally tends to hold poses a few beats longer than I can really do them. But she makes it very clear that we can drop the pose if we're getting tired. In the beginning I couldn't even stand as long as she did. I couldn't hold my arms up for very long. As the weeks have passed I find that I can do more and more. When I'm home I know I don't hold the pose for very long. But I've been trying to do a little more every day. I'm more aware of little changes. I'm more aware of which muscles do what.

Today I really had a good class. I had more stamina. Sally came up to me when I was in a pose (the picture is not me) and complimented me.

It's funny. I love that she isn't fixed on ideas of the "right way" to do a pose and yet I thrill when she likes the way I'm doing a pose. Right. Wrong. So subtle. Such a dance between pride and dread.

Any way. I was in the pose and Sally was talking about balance and how the body, even when it's in balance is moving out of balance. It's a metaphor that fits my larger sense of how IT ALL is. We arrive at a place we call right. And even as we position there we are moving out of it. Life being what it is moves us out of it. And, for me, that's all about context. Something that seems so right can shift when read in a larger context.

Ari wasn't in class but she picked me up after class, as a surprise. I didn't know she was coming. We went to the new JCC to check out their pool. It's pretty great and the cost of a membership is good. But more than I have. I'm not bothered by that. It's kind of far away from me. I'd spend a lot of time getting there and back. If money were no object I might have signed up.

At home I turned on the TV and got the news. We bombed a mosque. And suddenly all my musings about duality and balance and posture fall away and there is only one word.

Wrong.

When I was in tree pose and Sally was talking about balance I found myself imaging holding the two extremes of right and wrong, good and bad, yes and no. I felt it in my body. I felt myself relaxing into a moment that felt wrong, knowing that movement was occurring even as I stood there.

Let me be clear. I didn't feel wrong physically. I felt kinda good. I felt balanced, strong, aligned, beautiful. But I was thinking about a way to be when experiencing something that feels wrong. Being in that pose is an active process. But you are still.

When I heard the news I felt my shoulders tighten. My chest cave. My face harden. It isn't about whether I feel good. Or bad. It's about those moments of falling. Which have and will come.

And then.

The last line in Kurt's post seems apt.

Sometimes life seems so precarious.

                                     8:16 PM

For more than twenty years of an insane history, hopelessly lost like all the men of my generation in the convulsions of time, I have been supported by one thing: by the hidden feeling that to write today was an honour because this activity was a commitment - and a commitment not only to write. Specifically, in view of my powers and my state of being, it was a commitment to bear, together with all those who were living through the same history, the misery and the hope we shared.     -Albert Camus

April 8 2004 The First Man is an interesting read. He hadn't finished it. The book was put together by his daughter and all the footnotes and appendix notes are intended to act as a reminder that what we are reading is a draft. Sentences stop short. Character's have more than one name. There are footnotes for notes he had written on the page. It is a draft. The only other time I enjoy reading footnotes is when David Foster Wallace uses them. In this case it's like getting to listen in on the writer's process.

The book opens like a novel but moves into a memoir. My thought is that he was going to edit and shape and carve a novel out of everything he was putting down.

When Renee was here she told me that it's common for books published out side of the U.S. to have the name of the translator on the cover. Readers know who the translator is and they have favorites. In my edition of The Last Man the translator is listed in the back, with a very nice little paragraph of information. Something I didn't notice right away, despite the fact that Renee made me aware of the practice. I am guilty of that particularly American obtuse centrality in which I assume English.

Perhaps the job of a translator is to be invisible. I've had conversations with Karen and Ari about how that works when they are doing interpreting for the deaf. And I've had my own experience of how problematic that can be. It seems like knowing who the intermediary is important. People have agendas, limitations, blind spots. There is no real invisibility.

I listened to the testimony. She is masterful. I think it's important to note how masterful, not as an expression of respect for the content of what she put out. In fact she put out very little content. She obfuscated and rationalized and ignored questions. She was masterful. She got a little shaky when pressed. A little. None of which was surprising.

There is no real invisibility.

                                     1:39 PM

April 9 2004 Kell is doing this interesting thing that I must admit I don't completely understand because in order to completely understand I'd have to read about the President's Challenge and I just don't want to. But I do get enough to understand that she's tracking her fitness along the described path of the challenge, or something like that. And it's going well. She is  46% bronze.

A woman I know works with kids at the YWCA. She told me a story about a young girl who didn't want to take a fitness test because she was fat. After some encouragement the girl took the test and passed every thing like the number of sit-ups and pulling herself up the rope but she didn't get what ever gold star thing they were handing out because she weighed what she weighed. It's the kind of story that pisses me off.

As a kid I could never compete in gym but I could dance for three hours without a break at the wee teen dance and be sad when it was over. And I always thought I might have liked gym more if the feeling of being judged hadn't been so overwhelming. I loved swimming. I've always loved walking. I'm not so interested in throwing or hitting balls around in any way.

Swimming might be the only exercise I can do that I don't find boring. I can swim until my muscles start to twitch.

Yoga works. I become preoccupied with the form. My mind becomes engaged.

I have hand weights by my desk that use. It's a good way to take a break when you're trying to write and it isn't happening. And I do like working with weights.

If I'd been a thin or averaged sized kid no one would have cared if I could climb a rope. My thin friends didn't care if they could do it. But for me it was a mark of failure that turned me off to all things sport like. Sad, really.

Kell linked up the Sandy Swartz article in which Sandy talks about the origin of the 300,000 deaths number and the misuse it gets. I was thinking about all the thin and average sized friends I have who drive short distances and just don't like to move around. They are also not helping their bodies with that lack of movement but no one seems to be worried about them.

But I also kinda think ... so what?

I was telling Kristina about how I saw myself as someone who didn't have any game in the world of the body. When I was young that combined with a sixties kid party mentality and a down and out identity and I drank and did drugs and imagined that I might die as a result but I just didn't care. One of my favorite memories is the late night too high conversations in which a friend would tell me that they loved me just the way I was and they thought I was beautiful but they were worried about my health. I would smash a cigarette into an overflowing ashtray, slug down a bit of bourbon, suck another line into an already crusty nose and laugh. My health?

So Kell is 46% bronze. And I'm shouting out woo hoo! You go girl! Even if I don't completely understand the calculations I understand that she is engaged in a process of physical well being. A process she is not suppose to be able to participate in. Being that she is fat and all.

Heh.

                                     3:46 PM

April 10 2004 Somewhere in another dimension there is a golden palace of gratitude constructed by my delight in every book Kristina has ever bought for me. She is responsible for at least two shelves of the books I currently own. Yesterday she told me that I would be receiving a Camus care package.

When a package is coming I become paralyzed. I can't do anything that might mean I'll miss the buzzer. By 1:00 yesterday the buzzer had not buzzed and I was feeling the need for a shower. I took the shower and just as I was almost done I thought I heard the buzzer. By 3:00 I figured I'd missed the package. And then the bzzzzzzz came.

Mom sent me popcorn for Easter. I was surprised and happy but it wasn't the books. By:00 I knew they weren't coming. But I was wrong.

Not only did she buy me the books she is reading for her class, all of which are now in my All Consuming pile, but she bought me two others. I'm in a paradise of riches and the golden palace has two new rooms.

I read Camus when I lived in New York. The Vintage edition of The Stranger talks about the translator, Mathew Ward, on the cover and he writes the preface. It may be my imagination but I think this one is better that the one I read years ago.

I also got my Year Of The Snake postcard. Some days the mail is better than others.

                                     10:54 AM

April 10 2004 I was going to participate in the Google bomb whenI first read about it at M's but I forgot. I just saw again at Alas. So here goes.

Jew.

Barry wrote it up very well but if you need more on why go here.

                                     12:23 PM

April 11 2004 I stumbled on Sound and Fury the other day. I missed a lot of it so I added it to my queue. I'd like to watch the whole thing. Karen and Ari have both talked to me about the debate in the deaf community. In the movie I got to hear a bit of it from deaf people. And both Ari and Karen have talked with me about the comparisons to the fat revolution.

As a hearing person I find it hard to not want deaf people to have the opportunity to hear. And I want to be quick to say that I don't know enough about the technology to have a really clear opinion about the implant. But I'll tell you what, when I was listening to the deaf people talk about identity I got it.

There isn't one kind of fat person. There's a spectrum of experience. When you spend time with fat people you hear a lot of similar experience but you also hear differences. The eat less/exercise more formula is not as simple as it sounds. And if you really talk to fat people you learn about that. For me size acceptance, or fat revolution, is not about trying to stay fat. It's about not using the food/movement parts of your life in a pursuit of an idea of physical perfection. And it's about understanding how being fat is part of your identity. I'm not a thin person in a fat body. I'm a fat woman. For all of the problems that holds there are also gifts.

I think there is a detox phase when you stop dieting. Some people get a little crazy around food. For me, there was some of that. But I had cooking. Understanding food as a craft has been a fantastic process for me. But I don't see that as part of my size acceptance process. It might be part of my personal process but not part of THE process. It's important to separate the food part of your life from your ideas about your body size.

Recently, I've heard two different fat activists talk about feeling bad because they have to be aware of their food in a diet like manner because they have diabetes. For me this is a fundamental misread of what the fat revolution is all about. Size acceptance should enhance a person's ability to care for their body. Hopefully if fat people free themselves from the goal of a limited form of beauty and a fear driven idea of health, they'll be able to forge a truly meaningful relationship with their bodies. But I think it's a difficult and maybe life long process.

The part of the movie I tuned into was when a deaf woman was talking about her anger and sadness for another woman's choice to get the implant for her deaf child. The mother said something about music. Being able to hear music.

Music.

The deaf woman said music didn't matter to her. It's not a part of her life. It never has been. She thinks she has a fine life. She resents the idea that she doesn't. And I understand. I also understand wanting a deaf child to be able to hear music.

We all make choices. The one thing I'm very clear about is that even if I don't understand a person's choice I need to try and allow them the dignity of their choice. And even that isn't easy. There are times when that might mean having distance between you and another person. And then there are the choices that people make for their children.

Very complex stuff. No easy answers. Just the need for open hearts. And minds.

                                     11:07 PM

April 12 2004 Jan's middle name is Kobina, just like his dad. So I now call them K3. And they were all here yesterday. I pulled the ravioli out of the freezer and topped it with sauteed yellow and orange bell pepper, some shallot and mint. And I made some crostini with roasted tomato spread on them. And some olives. We ate and played with Jan. He is pretty fantastic. I gave him the baby blanket. It was too small, as I feared. He's already pretty tall. But the colors are beautiful. It's one of those things that was better in intention than actuality.

Last night I watched Extreme Make Over:Home.  It's the second time I've seen the show. And again I had mixed feelings. This episode was about a family in which a son was in a wheel chair and the house didn't really accommodate him. They gave him a ramp to the front door, which they widened, one of those endless swimming pools, work out equipment, a bathroom he can wheel into, a studio kitchen in his own space,  and a mini music studio. They also took care of the rest of the family. The sister who had submitted the family to the show got a brand new bed room. They fixed up his younger brother's "play house" and his bed room. The whole house got fixed up complete with an elevator so he can get up and down the three floors.

It's impossible not to be happy for this family, especially the young man. He has access. He has the things he needs to make his life more independent. It all brought me to tears.

But.

I kept thinking about the people watching the show. People who are working two jobs, or have been laid off, or who are working and they can barely keep their bills paid. I've had two conversations with two different friends in the past few days in which they talked about how hard they work and how difficult a time they're having.

And much of what is happening is about run away inflation, corporate greed, economic policies that favor one percent of the population. And then we get fed fairy tale stories about lottery winners and television make overs. And we spend our time flipping through catalogues imagining what we will buy when our bag of money comes in and we lose our creativity. We wait and long for the big win.

And believe me. I am talking about myself.

The show isn't the problem. If I could have watched a Moyer's discussion I might have done that instead. But it was emotionally satisfying to see this family get the big gift. It did feel good to think about the ways their lives might get better. I just want more information and fewer commercials. And I want a deeper analysis of what makes life worth while.

                                     1:33 PM

April 13 2004 Blog tour.

Bobbi had her blog birthday the other day. Her blog is one of blogs I go to for beauty. But I was happy to read her make a political post. Not because I think everyone need be political. Just because it reflects how strongly people are feeling about how wrong things are.

Miguel writes about Tonio's absence. It's hard not to worry when someone stops blogging. So many times I've worried about something I said. Or didn't say.

Jill's posts about unemployment make me laugh. In that ohshitit'ssotrue kind of way.

Via a link in a comment box on a blog I jumped to from M's.

570 comments.

                                     8:17 AM

April 13 2004 Happy Blog birthday to Susan!!

Oh how glad I am that she is there!

She did the grab the nearest book meme today.

1.Grab the nearest book.

2.Open the book to page 23.

3.Find the fifth sentence.

4.Post the text of the sentence on your blog.

OK.

The traveler waited in the barely furnished little office, then noticed a map, which he was studying when the caretaker came in. - Albert Camus

                                     9:27 AM

April 14 2004 Danelle and Alena are in town visiting K3 and I got to spend some time with them.

We went to a show called The Art of  Aging. I'm not sure how to talk about it. We didn't stay for the whole thing, which was a little bit disappointing. There was a guy who opened the event. I thought he was cute. He led us in some singing. It went on a little bit long and was a bit ... oh ... I dunno. Abstract?

Then the Kairos Dance Theater performed. I loved them because they were all ages and sizes. Then there was Filipino American. musical group.

We were only half way through the first half of the event and we were kinda tired so when the musical group began their forth piece we bailed. We missed seeing Anna Halprin. And that was sad.

I think there's more than one mind set you hold when you view art. If you go to a performance of ballet, or even modern dance, a symphony, something where the people involved do nothing but what they are going to do that night, you look for a level of professionalism. A standard of sorts.

This was more like community theater. All around the idea of creativity in the elder community. So the standard is different. Not lower. Wider.

This event had quite a lot packed into one evening and it was a bit fragmented. I was there because Danelle wanted to go see something but I had heard about it on KPFA and was happy to be there.

It felt like I neither got to spend time with them nor got to see the event. Negotiating the needs of everyone, time and geography shaped our experience.

This morning I'm still trying to sort through the thoughts I had about art and standard while I was there. I think it's true that standard is reductive. Just like when you reduce things in cooking to make a flavor dense and specific. Less reduction and the flavor is still there but it isn't quite as vivid. And sometimes that's what you want.

                                     8:41 AM

April 15 2004 My brain is so full of thought right now it seems like I can feel the cells banging against my skull. I'm having trouble finding one thing to type about.

I was in a bad mood. But. Maybe I won't start there.

Yoga. Yoga was

No. Not there either.

I'll get back to all that.

I was back at city hall yesterday acting as language hawk for the task force on childhood nutrition and physical activity. Marilyn was there as fellow language hawk. Jennifer sits on the task force. As does Elena and Esther and a number of other folks who are not necessarily HAES folks. There were report backs from the small working groups. Nothing too egregious. Relatively speaking. I'm always gonna have issues. This lovely article had been sent to us all before the meeting.

There were two things that stood out for me as emerging images. The school district is pleased with itself because they've taken out all the soda and junk food vending machines and replaced them with vending machines that sell yogurt and bottles of water. I'm fine with all that. I'm happy the vending machines are out of the schools for a number of reasons. But apparently what's happening is that there are roach coaches driving up near school and selling the kids all the crap they can smuggle in. And there are the corner stores. Kids are in the corner stores. Stocking up.

Also. It seems there's a new trend for adults. They wear little speedometers so they can keep track of how many miles they walk every day. One person suggested giving the kids these things. This combined with a woman talking about Nike giving free shoes to kids who do physical activity. She also mentioned a laundry list of corporate sponsors for things, one of which was Bectel. I just wanted to say - remember Cochabamaba.

I had these vision of a developing underground for snack foods. Guys in trench coats selling chips and soda to kids in the school yard. And kids being handed Nikes and speedometers as they enter kindergarten.

However. I should confess that I'd spent an hour sitting on the steps of city hall reading Camus and I was in a raging internal philosophical storm.

And this is my problem. My day was just full of thinking. Even as I did yoga. And reading on the bus, while I ate lunch and that hour on the steps. My brain was processing information on a zillion different levels.

I told the task force a story about a friend of mine's son. He might be called fat. Hard for me to say since I'm always surprised by who is called fat. He eats a full range of foods. Good food and junk food. He's quite active. Happy. Charming. Adorable. Smart. Funny. Talented. OK. I'll stop. Anyway. His very good friend is thin but has a very narrow band of food that he will eat and he won't drink water. Only soda or juice. They were having a Easter morning sugar festival. Then they wanted to go visit another friend. It was walking distance. But meant walking up and down a few hills. My friend was telling them to walk and the thin kid was begging for a ride. He said, "I'm skinny. I don't need exercise."

Uh huh.

The task force is there because of the obesity epidemic. We may have gotten them to stop using weight as a proxy out loud but they still use it when they think we aren't listening. As I told the story they nodded but their eyes were glazed. Still It's on the pubic record. And Marilyn spoke out about the speedometers setting up a hierarchy of assessment for kids. So rather than walking for the love of movement they walk for points on a chart.

The most troubling moment was when a woman said that kids who are eligible for free lunch are also eligible for fee wavers on SAT's and that maybe if they refused to eat their school lunch they shouldn't get their fee waver. The reasoning in that gave me the spins. Other people in the room said things about not connecting food behaviors and academics accessibility. Phew. I'm tellin ya.

My bad mood. My bad mood was before all that. And I may have to write a whole separate post about it. Yoga didn't help. In some ways yoga made it worse. Sally had us doing new things. Which is good. But. I just wasn't in the mood.

It was really Camus on the steps of city hall that turned me around. There wasn't enough time for me to get the bus from yoga to home and back to city hall so I had some lunch and then had all this time. I sat on the steps and read.

Tenacity and acumen are privileged spectators of this inhuman show in which absurdity, hope, and death carry on their dialogue. -Camus

By the time I entered that room of well meaning health folks I was in an altered state. I listened to them and wondered if they could hear themselves. Most of them are really very nice people. Maybe it's because I've heard so many stories about kids who were denied candy or chips as kids. They found ways to get the forbidden. Don't we all? And then they entered into that loopy world of food obsession and eating disorder. And the tension I feel when corporate sponsorship gets brought up is ...well....phew. Maybe it's inevitable. Somewhere a poor kid in the USA is being given a free pair of shoes so that they can do exercise in an environment of cultural panic about body size. The shoes are made by a poor kid in Indonesia.

Absurdity. Hope. Death.

Oh. I have more. I'm still sorting.

                                     9:09 AM

April 15 2004 Yesterday I noticed a blog in my refers and a post which may have been responding to my thinking about deaf community and fat community and the formation of identity. Or just general stuff. Her post (which doesn't seem to have a perma link) was about being a quadriplegic.

The post stayed with me all day, through the bad mood and yoga and lunch and the reading on the steps of city hall and the task force.

Suzanne was the first person to make a connection for me around ideas of health and weight and ableism. I just hadn't thought about it before. And  my thoughts about the connections are still forming. What I take from Jody's post is a feeling of being with what is and staying open to possibility.

For me, size acceptance isn't about getting fat, or trying to get fat, or trying to stay fat. It's about waking up one morning and deciding that you aren't going to reject how ever many pounds are described as extra. You aren't going to hate them any more. And that is the first morning in a shift of identity. You stop being separate from parts of your body. And maybe, for some people, there's a race to the nearest food court to eat all the things you've been avoiding. But that's really not a central issue. Or, I should say, it wasn't a central issue for me.

What was central was a slow reconstruction of the way I imagined life in a body. And a rebuilding of identity. There was a lot of ire. A lot of shifting inner loyalty.

Coincidentally enough Marilyn said something about ableism  today.

Camus talks about the time Sisyphus spends going down the hill. He gets the rock to the top and then it rolls back down and then he must go down and get it. What does he think about?  Does he think about futility? Despair? He's going through this for eternity after all. Maybe he thinks about futility and despair for awhile but then....

He might begin to reminisce. He might start telling himself jokes. He might begin to notice what the hill looks like.

You just wake up one morning and you begin to incorporate. It's not a vertical process. It's about being with what is. It's not about giving up. It's about being awake and not using a system of assessment that makes everything an either/or. It's about a calm inner moment of knowing. This is who I am.

And whatever happens next is possibility. Wide. Open. Possiblity.

Kristina told me the title for The Stranger came from a poem by Baudelaire.

                                     9:11 PM

April 16 2004 I'm blaming Camus for everything. My mood. My accelerated thought process. My need to talk about everything all at the same time. Except. I actually do often need to talk about everything all at the same time. So. I guess I'll just blame him for the other stuff.

Blogging. I mean. Jeez. There are so many blogs. It's mind boggling. Or bloggling. Heh.

So. From Jody's blog I jumped to another blog and then to another and then to the Writing Salon, which I knew about because Ray had mentioned it but I hadn't spent much time reading it. And there was Whiskey River. I got quite excited. It was like I'd found the secret hiding place. I remembered Kurt's dream so I went there to find a link to it and in his post today he had a morning verse.

And that reminded me of the Baudelaire.

Phew.

I'm  having a giggle fit.

There are all these new people and some how they circle back to my own blogroll. Where there are people I am missing. And people I was worried about losing.

The week began on awkward footing. By Wednesday I was crumbling. And it had to with thinking about myself in relationship to people. Perhaps because I'd seen an old friend. I thought I might write about it but it isn't quite in focus. Just a vague fumbling sense of a shifting context. And a love of ineffable clouds.

                                     11:10 AM

April 17 2004 I got off the F line down by the wharf and there was a man inside a trash can holding a sign that said, "white trash." He was welcoming us to SF in a raucous, garrulous manner.

This is a part of the wharf where people stand in a pose until someone puts money in a cup. Then they move robot-like. Or play music. It's a carnival.

And I had just been on a restored old streetcar from Italy, on which the signs are all in Italian. I'd been reading you know who for most of an hour while we chugged the length of Market street and made the turn onto Embarcadero.

So it would seem.

                                     10:18 AM

April 18 2004 Some days I just can't start. I slept badly. Woke up with the sheets in one direction and the blanket in the other. I've been doing my usual Sunday morning. Radio/blog/ breakfast. I'm just doing it very slowly and without much brain cell response. I'm trying to remember my dreams. Something about swimming. Not sure. I took a shower in hopes that it would jog some brain cell function.

I watched all of Sound and Fury yesterday. My thoughts are pretty much the same. There was twenty extra minutes on the DVD. I love that about DVDs. There are two families connected by marriage. One gets a cochlear implant for their deaf child and one does not. The one that doesn't moves to Maryland so that their children can go to a very good school and live in a community of deaf people. The family who did get the implant thinks the other family is abusive because they aren't giving their child a way to hear. I was struck by the vigor of their opinion. The surgery is so invasive and dramatic. It was almost as if in order to feel OK about it they had to make the other family very wrong. These are enormous and very personal decisions. I don't think it can be talked about in terms of right and wrong. I'm with the deaf people who understand deafness as an identity. And I think that even if a deaf child gets the implant they should learn ASL. And, as always, I wonder about the people who can't afford to even think about costly surgery.

In the beginning of the film one of the deaf men says that if he was offered a pill to make him a hearing person he wouldn't take it. I've said that about being fat.

I also watched The Sweet Hereafter, which was complex, beautiful and somewhat disturbing. There was extra stuff on the DVD, including Russel Banks reading from the book.

It was a lot of stuff to take in and maybe that's why I slept badly. I can't tell.

Sometimes when I'm like this I wonder if some thing is brewing.

                                     4:09 PM

April 20 2004 It's turn off your television week. A very good idea. And it seems to me there is less and less to watch on TV. There are whole evenings here when the TV is off. But my TV is on channel 26 during the day, a lot. It is odd that I find the sound of public policy so comforting. But I do. I listen to about an hour of MSNBC, or CNN a day. I can't really deal with more. I listen to CSPAN, especially Book TV.

Not that all my television watching is information.

I'm not much on most reality TV. In fact I find it loathsome. But I do have a weakness for the home makeover things. Which I think might be because it's fun to watch things change. I have been watching Starting Over because I like to talk personal process with Ari and she watches it. And I like some cooking shows. Adrienne told me about the upcoming Iron Chef challenge. I'm psyched for that. I interviewed with Bobby Flay once, when Mesa first opened. He seemed like a nice guy.

I could ignore all that for a week. But last night was the first night of The Restaurant. It is true that I got sick of the first one. Too much product placement and too many shots of the NYC skyline. Jamie's kitchen was so much more real. But I just love the restaurant stuff. I've been through it all. The money people who decide that they know how to run a restaurant and hire managers who fuck with the quality of the food. Oh yeah.

To be fair, Rocco is busy doing the star chef thing, flirting and promoting himself and his book. And the place is 600,000 dollars in debt!!! Jeez. How does that happen? Still. Watching the money man and his band of managers enter the restaurant I was just remembering every place where I'd every worked and had the same experience. I could feel the tension in the staff. Now it's a pissing contest between Rocco and the money guy.

I never, never want to work in a place like that again.

So my television is on. And off. And it' s true that I sometimes indulge in crap television. Ah well.

                                     11:42 AM

April 20 2004 My posting rhythm is all over the map these days. I don't think it's a big problem just a reflection of my life.

This morning I woke up tired again. Third morning in a row. I'm blaming hormones, although there's no evidence of that. I was still in bed when the phone rang. Awake. But still in bed. Trying to find the will to wake up. This isn't typical. I don't actually like sleeping. When it happens I think hormones. It was only eight o'clock but that's late for me.

Kristina was calling. She has re-entered the world of on line journaling. Happily. We talked about Camus. And I gotta say that I love waking up to a conversation about Camus. It's better than coffee.

Just as we were winding down the phone beeped. It was Mom. Every now and again she'll call during the day.

Finally I got into motion, baked some muffins and took a shower. Looked through the job sites that I go to. The day is almost done. I'm having one of those whatthefuckiswrongwithme moments.

And I find that I'm reticent to write about my down times after the storm earlier this month. I was so shocked when I realized that I had a reader who held such a low opinion of me. Someone who I didn't feel got the whole context of my life. Now I feel like I need to be silent about my down times or I may be accused of hosting a pity party.

I've been accused (and I use the word accused intentionally) of being a personal blogger. One of the things I like about blogging is the idea that writing about doing my laundry might actually be fun for someone to read. I like reading about people's daily lives.

I didn't really know how deeply I felt the sting until I sat here feeling like I better not write that I'm tired. I'm not miserable. I'm not done in. I'm just frustrated. One of the things I like about blogging is that I can write a post when I'm not feeling that writerly.

Oh. I dunno.

I'm really OK. I'm just trying to get some rev up.

                                     5:22 PM

 April 20 2004 One of the things I've hated about having the political (cough) leaders is that when things get bad I find myself taking hope. Hope that people will vote them out of office. I've been thinking about this since Susan linked this picture.

There was a ban on publishing pictures of the coffins. But now we're seeing them.

The image stayed with me and I remembered the Sontag book.

Part of me was happy to see the picture and I'm sad about that. It's not a picture that should bring anything but sorrow. But I want people to want to vote him out of office. And,yet, there really is no reason to believe that people will feel what I feel when they see that picture.

So I take a breath and try to let go of the rage. And hold the sorrow. And still hope.

                                     11:04 PM

April 21 2004 Late last night I got a call from my aunt. She's mailing me a box of things before the sale begins. She's selling most of her possessions, her car and the family house. She's in a nursing home. I think that's such a crazy thing to have to do. I've sold most of my possessions a few times. But that was because I needed money. For my aunt it's kinda like cleaning up before she leaves.

I'm not sure what she's sending. I think a quilt, maybe her silver, some family photos. My mom started telling me what I was getting in her will ten years ago. I find it kind of annoying. My aunt asked what I wanted. She has a house full of antiques. But I'm just not feeling the idea of pulling up in front of her house with a U Haul. It's all so fraught.

I feel like once she gets everything sold and "cleaned up" she won't have a reason to be here any more. She's in constant pain. She can't do much. While Dad was still alive she had a sense of needing to take care of him. Even though they were both in the same nursing home being cared for by nurses. Once the sale is finished...

My aunt has a great personal story. But I'm not sure it's mine to tell.

                                     8:52 AM

April 22 2004 There was some chat about Bob Dylan's appearance on a Victoria's Secret commercial. It's pretty much died down. But I'm still thinking about it. Perhaps because I was reading an essay by Camus in which he talks about sensualists.

When I saw the commercial I thought it might well signal the end of civilization. Although, I have the end of civilization thought about once a day now. First there's the idea of Bob in a commercial at all. If it were a commercial for Berkinstocks I'd be bummed. I hate hearing Phobe Snow's voice in commercials. There are just some people who I don't want to do commercials. Actually, there are no people I want to do commercials. I want all the commercials to go away. But then (and maybe this is really first) there's the horror of the Victoria Secret toxic idea of beauty.

I remember a few years ago, around Christmas time, I heard some interesting music coming from the TV, which was to my left. I looked over and saw women in thongs and push up bras, all of the women with big wings. It felt like being hit with ice water. How are hetero young men supposed to learn about what women look like and what makes someone attractive when these images come at them from everywhere? How are young women supposed to feel about their own bodies when they look at these images? And what does it convey about sensuality and longing and beauty?

Joni Mitchell is a sensualist. She who made milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges too sound like communion. Who noted the slightest touch of a stranger set a trembling in her bones and the touch of finger tips make her circuitry explode. Deep kisses and the sun going down. Can you imagine her in a Calvin Klein underwear commercial?

I read an interview with Bob Dylan once a long time ago in which he was asked what a woman should do if she wanted to be with him. he answered, "Tell me everything." It was and may still be the sexist thing I'd ever heard.

I don't know how I can tell him this. There are no words for the way this hurts. People have speculated on why he did it. I don't really care why. I'm tired of hearing men who I admire explain why these images are not that big a deal.

Joni sings.

                                     1:12 AM

April 22 2004 Sometimes days go by and I don't talk out loud. It's the nature of living alone. Which is not to say that I don't talk to myself. Out loud.

Yesterday I talked to Suzanne for a few minutes before I left for yoga. I talked a little bit to my fellow yoga grrrls. I had lunch with Alexandra and talked. A lot. I came home and called Kristina. Then Suzanne called and then Ari called and then I called Suzanne again. I talked. All day.

In the middle of the night I woke up with a sore throat. It made me laugh. This used to happen to me when I had a band. I'd lose my voice after a night of singing. And that was a worry if I had to go back and sing again the next night.

My voice is rough this morning and my throat is still a little bit sore. But I loved every minute of all that talking. We solved the problems of the world yesterday.

                                     9:28 AM

April 22 2004 When my aunt called she asked about my weight. She always does. She asked something like, "Are you gaining, or losing; what are you eating?" I said. "I'm neither gaining nor losing. I had Swiss chard, mushrooms, chicken and pasta for dinner."

She said, " Oh, the fancy stuff."

Maybe if I'd said chard and not Swiss chard.

I was thinking about all that just now. Because I'm sitting here shelling English  peas.

                                     5:32 PM

April 22 2004 Pattie has an intersting new project. She's writing a book and going on tour.  While they travel they're going to gatherer info for another project. To fund all this she is selling some books.

All good stuff.

                                     7:42 PM

April 23 2004 A woman lost her job for the pictures I wrote about the other day. And I'm back to my discomfort about how happy I am that the pictures are being seen. It seems appropriate to feel uncomfortable. I'm not, however, the least bit uncomfortable about how angry I am that this woman was fired.

There's a way in which my feelings about the war are hard and unyielding. And I want to be able to hold my resolve and not feel so rigid. But when things are so out of proportion it feels like being hard and unyielding is the only way to be.

The SF DA, who I didn't vote for, is taking a courageous stand against the death penalty. She's under enormous pressure. The mayor I didn't vote for took a stand for love. So I understand that I live in a city where the left is left of the left. I may not have a clear sense of how people react to things.

Michael had an interesting experience the other day. It reminded me of a conversation I had with Mom in which she said the Laura and George just looked like good people and Bill and Hillary did not. My mother isn't a stupid person. When she says things like that I am stunned.

I am hyper-aware of how image creates opinion. Thinking about the pictures of the coffins it occurred to me that there will be people who will attach all kinds of jingoism to the pictures and it won't have the impact I think should.

And so it is. I'm thinking a lot about how to hold my own feelings about things and sustain an awareness of complexity and be able to have a conversation with my mom people who hold different opinions.

                                     10:48 PM

April 23 2004 So.

I haven't totally swallowed the Bloglines Kool ade yet. I understand the appeal. But I miss the faces. Sometimes when I dream about bloggers, especially those who don't put their pictures on their sites, I see them as their page. The colors, the text, the images. I love that moment when the page opens and I see all the buttons and photos and links. I love it when people change their design. I haven't taken the time to enter people in my blog lines ... uh ... thing. I keep thinking I should do that and experiment for a few days.

And then there's Air America. I don't love it. I like some of it. I like Janene. They certainly have been supportive of blogs. But. It's kinda like listening to Fox TV, only I agree with the opinions. I hate the commercials. I know I'm spoiled because I have KPFA and KALW. I know they're the last drink of water in the desert for many people and they're certainly more interesting than most television. But. On the first day Randi Rhodes said something about how we all were OK with the war in Afghanistan. Huh? I'm just not big on the talk radio hyperbolic style. It can be fun. Sometimes.

But. I mean. Can someone speculate on why I'm not linked by Ms. Musings?  I dunno. Any theories? I know I was mentioned to them.

What ever.

Do I sound cranky?  I'm not really.

Asparagus and peas. Two great tastes. Taste great together. Especially with smashed Yukon golds and medallions of lamb. I was thinking about how Renee took issue with saying smashed instead of mashed as I smashed away with my fork in a somewhat graceless manner and stopped smashing as soon as I had the potatoes in a lumpy pile. I can make mashed potatoes. But. I didn't.

I'm just sayin.

Are we here yet? Via Whiskey River.

                                     10:19 PM

April 24 2004 When I was twenty-one I had a crush on a young man. One evening I talked him into going to a bar with me. The idea was that I would get us drunk and then get us horizontal. And hopefully we wouldn't be too drunk because the being horizontal part was supposed to be the beginning of something beautiful.

As we arrived at the door of the bar he changed his mind about going in. He was a responsible young man. Not given to the bar life. I on the other hand, given the choice between going home alone and possibility, went right on in to the bar.

There was a cowboy band playing Bob Wills. I was drinking gin and smoking filter less cigarettes. A tall extremely thin young man with long scraggy black hair came walking in. We took one look at each other and the rest was not particularly memorable. But it was fruitful.

I'd been on the pill for a few years but just then I'd been poor and I wasn't getting lucky that often. I was working as a dishwasher. It was stupid. It was almost as if I was trying to prove that the fat girl could get laid. It wasn't calculated. It was part of a messy disoriented youth.

After a few months of waking up in the morning and running to the bathroom to be sick, I decided to take a pregnancy test, which at the time was not available over the counter. I went to Planned Parenthood.

Maybe if it had been the young man I wanted I might have had the baby. I can't say for sure. I can indulge in a long list of maybe if this and maybe if that but I can't know. It was not the first time that I had one man in my heart and a different man in my bed. But I didn't know the man and I didn't want to bring a baby into my entirely unplanned life.

I had an abortion.

I continued to drink and smoke and go to cowboy bars and I became very run down and got an infection. A month later I was in the emergency ward in the middle of the night doubled over in pain.

It's not the kind of story you offer up with no good reason. It is in my book. And there are ways in which it's in my book because I'm still trying to prove that the fat girl could get laid. But it's also there because I wanted to describe how I used my body. After years of being told that my body wasn't right I had very little sense of the value of my body. So I poisoned it and I gave it away.

I don't actually have any regrets. I know that I was feeling my way along. I wanted to be Janis Joplin. I wanted to be wild. I wanted to not care about the young man who changed his mind. I wanted to prove I could get what I wanted. It was messy. It was chaotic. But it was my life.

And no child had to walk that messy, chaotic, uninformed, fumbling, path with me.

I have sorrow about it. But I don't have regret. I was emotionally immature. I was flailing. But looking back I also know I had learned to hate my body and doubt my sexuality. I was hurling myself against life.

And why am I writing about it today? Because I can't be in Washington DC.

I used to think that if I could figure out enough about why I was who I was I could avoid mess and calm chaos. In some ways that's true but in some ways it's not. There's never been a time when I didn't feel like I was trying to understand. This story isn't about an epiphany. There are no profound conclusions to be drawn. There may be people who will judge my mess and my chaos. There usually are people who think they know what you should have done. There is one thing that I draw from the story. One thing for which I am profoundly grateful.

I had a choice.

                                     9:07 AM

April 25 2004 C-SPAN is at the LA book festival. I could say I wished I was there but it wouldn't be true. I'd be spinning in a circle not sure where to go first. And I'd need a gazillion dollars to buy books. This way I can sit in my pajamas with the keyboard at my finger tips and a glass of iced tea.

I listened to a panel discussion on the seduction of war hosted by Samantha Power. James Hillman was on the panel because he has a book coming out.

I saw Hillman speak when Dream Animals came out. A person in the audience asked him a question and Hillman stood there, a tall elegant man, one arm crossed over his chest, the other elbow resting on it, a finger resting against his lip. He stood there looking at the person and the silence was loud but not tense. But people don't always like silence. You could almost feel the people in the room holding their breath. And when he answered the question it was my impression that it was deeply considered. I don't remember the question. I don't remember the answer. I remember the way he stood there. I try to remember it when I'm in a conversation in which I feel flustered.

It was an interesting discussion. Although a bit rushed at the end.

And then there was a discussion about Brown vs the Board of Education some interviews with individual authors. Good book fun. And then there was a panel on manufacturing fear in America on which was the mighty Paul Campos. Barry Glassner was the moderator. I like his book although I haven't read it all. The panel was a bit odd since there were very serious discussion about foreign policy mixed with mentions of Art Bell and the diet industry. But Campos was articulate and engaging.

Well, yes.

There will be more of the festival of books on one C-SAN and the march on the other C-SPAN. KPFA is broadcasting from DC. While other people are taking a media break I have two screens and the radio going.

Yep.

I did turn off all the media for a while yesterday. And I sent my thoughts to Jenni and Manzanar.

                                     9:53 AM

April 25 2004   3:00 PM

It's the middle of the day and I'm still watching the march on C-SPAN. KPFA stopped their coverage, which was OK because the time is a little off. It's kind of like watching an old martial arts movie in which the mouths are moving and the sound comes later. Or earlier. Even the CPSAN coverage has been on and off. But mostly on.

And it's just fun and moving and huge. Lot's of star power. Ani was just singing. Madeleine Albright spoke. Which was cogitative dissonance at it's best. But the point was made again and again that this is a coalition, not a cult.

And while I'm watching/listening, I've been playing with the site. Making little buttons. Wishing I know more than I know. It's the perfect tedious spaced out work to do.

I flipped over to the book festival and Karen Hughes was on. She's being booed and asked challenging questions. Maybe there is hope.

April 26 2004   10:27 AM

I sort of forgot about the Iron Chef thing. I caught a little bit of it late last night. The show is very campy. The food is over the top. It's fun.

The last few times I made dinner I thought about what I might do differently if I were cooking for someone else. I do take care with what I make for myself but not every time. Some of the things you do for flavor, like adding stock, can be problematic if you're cooking for one. I don't always take the time to cut some shallot. I don't have fresh herbs around. I'm not beyond using some prefab mixes.

But the minute someone else is coming over my mind goes into planning mode. Textures, colors, salt, sweet, sour, savory, temperatures, season, region dance around in my head. I want the food to look good, smell good and, obviously taste good. And if possible I want to put something together in a way that's slightly different. Unexpected.

When I was cooking the infamous SWISS chard, mushrooms, chicken and pasta dinner, I was in  just-get-it done mode. Even as I was cooking I was thinking that I coulda/shoulda chopped some shallot and/or garlic and I coulda/shoulda hit the greens with some wine or balsamic vinegar and when I took the pasta from the water to the pan with greens and meat I thought I coulda/shoulda put some oil or butter on it so that it didn't stick together. But I didn't. It was still good. The pasta did get a little clumpy but not much. It just didn't have the care I would have taken if I were cooking for almost anyone else.

One night last week I sauteed some mushrooms and then poured in some miso chicken broth. Whole Foods makes these juice box size containers of stock. Into that I tossed some asparagus and then some soba noodles. The starch from the noodles thickened the stock into a creamy, almost gravy like sauce. I coulda/shoulda added some rice wine vinegar, some green onion, some garlic, some ginger, some mustard powder. But I didn't and it was good and quite satisfying.

Professional cooking is chop wood/carry water. Or more accurately chop garlic/ carry stock pot. It's like Tibetan sand painting. You need a combination of commitment and detachment. If you're making 300 bowls of pasta in a row the work turns into production line repetition. Each one an attempt at art. Each one sent into the ocean of digestion.

But first. If everything goes well. The food will please the eye. The nose. The tongue. Words will be exchanged. Little moans will come from lips moving in rhythm with consumption. If everything goes well there will be a memory of that dinner in that restaurant. If not a detailed memory, a feeling. A sense of having been satisfied.

Yes. It's a fine way to make a living.

And I try to make that magic for myself. It is possible to make magic for one self. Every once in a while I put food on plate, or in a bowl and it's just so beautiful. I take a minute to look at it and be pleased and happy that I have some skills.

The Iron Chef thing is a sport. And cooking with men in professional kitchens can some times feel like a sport. A contact sport. I've been bashed with oven doors, splattered with hot oil, shouted at, sworn at. And let me tell you. I can bash, splatter, shout and swear with the best of them. In the part of the show I watched Bobby Flay had cut his finger and was still jamming around the kitchen, moving in an arms and legs every where manner. Making messes that I know he didn't clean up. But it was still fun to watch.

In my own kitchen the dishes wait for me. And I like that part. I like the feel of soap and water and the squeak of clean. But I'm not an Iron Chef. I'm a cook.

There's conscious and un-
conscious    or there's conscious
semi-conscious (self-
hypnotized)    and the various
levels of unconsciousness:  dreams, and then
below that
is that grailish?
Alice Notley

April 27 2004   10:02 AM

Once, in NYC, I got a subway car that was empty. I was happy about it being empty because I wanted a seat. People would come through the doors and then back out of the car in a hurry. I began to wonder what I was missing. Finally I realized that the air conditioner was off. It was pretty hot.

In part I didn't notice because I live in my head. But I also spent my days standing beside a 500 degree oven. Hot? I didn't know from hot.

These days I am more temperature aware and it's been hot in SF. Record breaking. But it takes me a while to notice. When Karen was here last year she bought a fan, which I never thought I'd use. But I pulled it out yesterday. Fans are cool.

Heh.

It does make me cranky. But I don't make the connection. When I'm cranky I just try to talk myself off the ledge. And then, in one moment of paying attention, I figure out that a fan might help.

The other day Hillman, talking about our cultural addiction to war, said, "The hardest thing is to wake up."

April 28 2004   8:23 AM

I got the big box of stuff from my aunt. She sent her silverware. It's very dear. There a few matching settings and some odds and ends. Beautiful soup spoons that don't really match anything else. She sent two framed things, one is the Parmeley family crest. I don't really think we have a crest. I think my grandmom might have bought it from an ad. And the other is a crocheted doily like thing, also of the name Parmeley. Sweet. In a way.

She sent a quilt. Garish in the color choices and pattern but, again, sweet. She collected Royal Copenhagen Christmas plates and she sent me two. It's all so dear.

I called to thank her. She sounded OK. She said she'd had a bad morning but was better.

In Joan Didion's last book she writes about the family possessions that were in the westward traveling wagons, over the big mountains and into the Sacramento valley. There they become anchors of belonging, as if they were saying, "Look at what we went through to get here. We mean you now belong." Some of those same possessions are now in Didion's apartment in New York. And , as it always is with her writing, there is an idea of something that may have been lost and maybe even should be lost. Or maybe not lost but changed in some fundamental way. There's probably more than one conclusion to draw.

More than one conclusion to draw from a wooden box full of mix matched silver and a family name I don't completely own. And a sweetness so close to bitter that I have to swallow before I notice.

April 28 2004   7:22 PM

There they become anchors of belonging.

I think it shoulda been: There they became anchors of belonging. It was early. I was still sleepy. I hate when I reread posts and see things and wish I'd written something differently. Worse is when I see a missing word.

The other day when I was writing I typed they're for their. I absolutely know the difference. I knew it a few minutes later when I was rereading and smacked myself in the head. It's. Its. I know the difference. A. An. I know. Just the other day I did that one wrong. I'm typing along and I just fuck up. My head is always going faster than my fingers.

Elayne and Rana both blogged this very cool test by this very cool women. She's been interviewed a lot lately on various radio shows about her book. I was a 50% stickler but I can tell you I took the test more than once. I'm not so good a apostrophes that come after words. Commas? Don't even talk to me about commas. I get very pissy when people talk to me about commas.

I own all the style books. I admire people who get this stuff. I depend on Cheryl and Renee and the people in my life who get it.

But it's not the things I don't know about that bug me. It's not the occasional misplaced apostrophe, or comma. It's not even the forgotten word. It's when I see a word that just isn't the right one.

There they became anchors of belonging.

I need a live-in editor. And a live-in therapist. And a live-in masseuse.

I'm just sayin.

There are things that need to get done around here.

April 29 2004   9:36 AM

A few days ago (or so) Kurt posted about writing about politics. I left a quip of a comment. I'm not sure why. I wasn't trying to be disrespectful. I think Kurt has much to say.

I am guilty of reflexive identity politics. Rigid orthodoxy? Not so much. Oh I dunno. Maybe sometimes. Which is not to say that he meant me in his characterization of the left. I do self-identify as left. Actually, left of left.

But the reasons I'm thinking about it days later is because I have a similar dilemma. I spend a lot of my day trying to be informed. I start with KPFA and Democracy Now and on line news sources, too numerous to link. I keep up on local stuff. And there just isn't a day when I'm not overwhelmed with anger and frustration.

At the end of yoga Sally leads us in a bit of meditation. She's good. Not too precious. Just calming and sincere. It helps that I can't hear her very well. I'm too cynical. Words like energy can hit me the wrong way. Yesterday she started talking about our hearts and energy and visualizing and somehow she got to sending energy out to the whole world and ...

Class was good for me yesterday. I held poses. I ignored my inner chatter. blood was moving in my muscles and my skin by the end. When I heard the word 'world' I remembered. And it was almost unbearable. Knowing. Knowing and not knowing what to say, or do to make it stop. Feeling the anger and the frustration. Always there.

I walked out of class feeling the strength I've been slowly developing. My knees hurt less right after class. I stand more erect. I took a different bus route home. Went to Real Foods for sesame tuna salad and Orangina and Newman O's. Got on the second bus. Looked out over the bay as we drove up and over the Union Street hill. Came home and read blogs while I ate.

Last night on Sixty Minutes II there was a report on the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners. Despite the horror of the revelations the show was padded with rational. There's been so much not reported. One of soldiers talked about getting no training. I guess you need training in how to treat people with dignity. Earlier, on the bus, I'd read a short story by Camus in which a man gives a prisoner an opportunity to be free. All this in my head while I sit in my apartment, drinking French orange soda, cooled by an oscillating fan.

How do I write? What can I say? How can I not talk about it?

I doubt I have the stamina to track and document the information needed to unseat the boy prince. My opinions are visceral and I find no language. Only a need to write something that fumbles through the details and holds the tension.

April 29 2004   9:41 PM

Via Susan.

April 30 2004   9:41 PM

There is.

Just.

So much.

I do not.

Understand.