May 2004
Es una historia de manana When Mom called for the Friday night talk she told me that she'd just seen a story about the Nightline protest on the news. She went on to tell me why the protesters were stupid. The big boss said don't do it and that's the way it is. She even used the analogy of if she said not to do something to me. The theory being that if she did say don't, I wouldn't. I was tempted to ask how she thought that had worked out. But my silence was saying enough. She went on to talk about World War II and how they didn't see the pictures of the dead. Sometimes my mother just parrots ideas about authority and trusting leadership and doing what you have to do. All of which comes from the rich tradition of being working class and a single mother who had to move back in with her parents in order to give her daughter a good home. I used to think it was a generation thing but there are people her age who don't think like that. I watched Nightline. I watched because sometimes the conversation about war is too abstract and I wanted to see faces. It was a lot to take in. That many faces and names passing in that amount of time is too much to take in. As soon as a thought would form about the age, or race, or gender of the faces other ages, races and genders were speeding by. Sometimes a face would look too serious for someone that young, or a smile would look extra wry, or wide and engaging, or someone looked like such a nice guy, or there was no discernable expression, or outstanding feature. I found that it was hard to breath. I was aware that for every face there was a family and friends and a story now truncated. I was aware that for every face there were faces of Iraqi dead not being shown. I was aware that there were other faces of other deaths, not having to do with this war but faces of people who have died during the same time frame and many in circumstances just as distorted. Or more so. I've read the Bhagavad Gita. I called out to Lord Krishna to whisper in my ear. Explain the field of lord again. Help me to know my place. Right at the end of my call with Mom she suddenly dropped the phone and ran off shouting for K. Minutes went by. She came back to tell me that he had fallen. He didn't remember how. He may have passed out. He hit his head on something and there was a little blood. She got him cleaned up and in his chair before she came back to tell me what happened. I sat on my end of the phone waiting for information. All that happened before Nightline. And now it's late. I went to bed but the neighbors on both sides are restless and noisy it being Friday night and all. My mind is tired but too full of thought. Between my inner noise and their outer noise, I can't sleep. And so I went to Susan's blog to get the link about Asheville. I can't get the perma link to work on her post about it all but it's up right now. And I thought I'd remind everyone about rabbits and labour rights and all the things that come with May. Things have quieted down a bit. Just the low rumble of bass lines and drum beats. And the occasional laugh. I'm going back to bed. With a head full of quandary. And a mighty, mighty thirst. Peace. Happy Birthday Monica.
The other day Mark Woods put his picture on his blog. (You have to scroll way down to see it.) I've gotten quite used to the idea of not knowing what he looks like. But I was happy to see the picture. He looks like a very lovely man. I'm not at all sure what I mean by that. I'm not sure what makes someone look lovely. Maybe it's just the sun and the sand and the years of going to his blog for links to SO MUCH. Maybe I see through the eyes of affection already established with language. I've gone back to look at the picture a few times. It makes me happy to see him smiling. Out there. In the sand. I thought about it Friday night while I was looking at the Nightline photos. Some faces did make me smile. Some made me sad. Some were scary. Some just passed by. But, again, I couldn't tell you why. I think a lot about my own reactions to appearance. I was jumping around the blogs and found a post for May Day referencing both Julia Kristeva and Camus and talking about revolt.
Which was something I'd been thinking about all day. The nature of revolt. (via Wood_s Lot). Who we have been. Who we are becoming. On Sunday Salon a woman is reciting the names of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. I've been sent this article from the New York Times so many times, I finally read it. It's OK. You gotta hand it to the Times for being able to find a picture of fat people in which the people have faces. Or one of them does. Most news sources use pictures in which fat people are cut off at the neck. Because, after all, if you want to hate someone it's easier if you don't have to look into their eyes. It's easier to hate hips and thighs and bellies and arms when they aren't connected with a life story. Sadly, the picture is ten years old. And it's not like there haven't been fat activist events in the last ten years. I mean, think about that. The paper of record uses a ten year old stock photo, not to accompany an article about history but in an article about a current trend. I guess I could I could be happy for any article written about the concerns of fat people that does not include the word diet. The article does give voice to some very cool guys who wrote some very cool books. And one book by a woman. Someone is going to have to help me understand why the idea that a moderately active fat person may be healthier than a sedentary thin person is controversial. Doesn't that just make sense? The last line in the article is a quote from Peter Sterns in which he says that fat people, faced with the burden of being seen as immoral, may eat ice cream as a way of comforting themselves. It just so happens that I ate some ice cream right before I began to type. I can tell you that it was very tasty and I enjoyed it. And somehow I'm still pissed off about the idea of being seen as immoral because of the size of my ass. I don't feel a bit better about job discrimination, lack of access to public facilities, difficulty in finding unbiased health care, a hostile public life, and on and on and on and on. I guess I could eat more ice cream. And yet, since I'm not a complete idiot, I don't imagine that it will make me feel better about those things. I know there are people with compulsive over eating issues and I don't want to imply that they are idiots. It's a real problem. And I also think that food can be comforting. But. There just isn't enough ice cream in the world. So I read the article with a jaundice eye. I know it's a good thing. My ire was already up because I watched The Practice last night. The show is ending. The one show in which a fat woman had a dignified, serious role will be gone soon. This season the show took a turn for the weird. I'm not sure if they were trying to create a new show. I'm not sure what they were up to. But I wasn't diggin it. And last night there was a scene in which Ellenor punches another woman attorney. The other woman was being horrible. I might have wanted to punch her myself. William Shatner has been playing the role of a loopy lawyer. When Ellenor walks past him he says she scares him but he finds it titillating. That idea of fat women as powerful and scary irritates me. It may be true that the actual physical size of a fat woman gives her a quality of power. Maybe that's overwhelming for some men. I can't say. I know that, as a fat woman, I'm not interested in being a physical threat. Not even to those people who want to hurt me. And the punch was just more of that characterization. Fat women are brutes, doncha know? We're really just so close to out of control at any given moment, I tell ya. You better hope we eat more ice cream. Wouldn't want us to get too upset. I'm not that interested in power. But I do know that it's important to understand how power operates in our lives and in our sense of self. I'm interested in mutuality. And engagement. And while I'm in complete agreement with the ideas about the war on obesity as a kind of moral panic, I'm more interested in the failure of imagination reflected in the way fat people are described and represented. Imagination. Vision. Revelation. Diversity. Can I hear some new ideas? Can I see some new narratives? Can we address the very real issues of social justice for fat people? Can I read an article about fat lives that doesn't conclude with the idea of me running to the freezer for comfort that will never come? And here's the real real. I'm not interested in comfort. I imagine that people with real social justice issues and real lives and real longing for substantive relationship would be pissed off with such diminution of their hearts and minds. And wouldn't they have the right to be? Happy Birthday Jill. As I've gotten older it's become easier to not need to talk about everything all the time. However. Talking is still my drug of choice. I was on the phone for a long time yesterday. Which happens about once a week. And when I got off I was revved and wanted more. More connection. More analysis. More and then and then and then. Someone once told me a Sufi expression. To know. To dare. To will and to be silent. My feeling of knowing expands and contracts. I'm daring when I need to be. My will is capricious and serves some underground part of my heart. And silence has proven to be a comfort. The two things that feel the best are when I'm with someone and am able to talk and talk and when I'm with someone and am able to be silent. Together. Just to be with another person. Oh but I wanted to talk yesterday. I wanted to process. I wanted to rant and rave. I wanted to go on and on and on. And the silence pulled me down and in and I felt the release. And today. I can't remember what it was I needed to say. But. You know. If you call me. I'll think of something. Last week I sent a query letter to a publisher with the first chapter. I do this and then I chew my nails until I get the Dear Ms Parmeley letter. And then I crash. Not good. I know I need to get some more letters out there. Instead I read and bake muffins and and don't even get the laundry done. And long for conversations that come from the bones and rattle the sky. Zen Cat is back. Dang. It's the middle of the night and I'm awake. I hate when this happens. I got e-mail from George inviting me to join Orkut. It's the second time he's sent me one so I caved. Dru sent me an invitation to something like this once. Despite the fact that I write my life in public I am really kinda shy. Handwringingly shy. I do get over it when need be. And I couldn't say no to George. The best hug ever George. But now whadda I do? I had a lot of trouble with the questions. I said I dressed in an alternative manner, which was really my way of saying I wear bigger clothes. In fact my clothes are pretty basic cotton whatever. I said I smoked occasionally. I don't know why I said that. It's been so long. I just want to keep my options open. I think I kinda suck at writing profiles. Maybe I'll go back and work on it. Some day. The shyness thing. Oh. I'm not sure what to say about it. I like one on one, or small groups. But. Parties. No. No. Please. You'll always find me in the kitchen at parties. Care not cash is a program to end homelessness sold to the city of San Francisco by now Mayor Newsom back when he was a supervisor. It goes into effect now. I'm just heart sick about it. The care is not there. The budget analyst for the city said it won't work. The courts said it wouldn't work. But people are more willing to spend money pushing through bad legislation than they are willing to spend money creating jobs and affordable housing. And then there's Barbara Boxer supporting the death penalty. I know I live in a progressive city. But I'm not feeling it tonight. What am I feeling tonight? I'm gonna try to get some sleep. There is no place where the theory of relativity is more obvious to me than on a bus. The bus ride home from yoga didn't take long. I read for a while. And then stared out the window at the bay. Trying to track something. Some kind of signal. I was just a little bit hungry and I almost got off the bus twice for food. But I got back to North Beach and went for coffee. And then I remembered a little cafe. Really little. Where an extremely pleasant woman makes great sandwiches. I mean really. This woman is always so nice. She's in this very tiny kitchen. Just enough room for her. And she just makes sandwiches and conversation. I forget that she's there. She made me the wrong sandwich and yet what she made was more like what I wanted. I can't explain that but, really. Even her mistakes seem to work out. So I came home and had a long talk with Kristina about Hellenistic themes in Camus and why people who don't have a classical education might not notice and still enjoy the work. Yoga was very good. My triangle pose is getting better. That's not my picture and my pose isn't that good. Yet. And now I'm very tired. And wistful. Today is International No Diet Day. In some ways it's an unfortunate name. Because we are all on a diet. What we eat is our diet. But when you read about Mary Evans Young and how she got the idea for INDD you get the reasoning. She saw women hurting themselves and dying in pursuit of a body and she wanted them to celebrate their body.
Last year, right around this time, I'd just begun to get Planet Organics. They'd sent me this pale green butter lettuce and I made a lunch with some broiled chicken and cucumbers in yoghurt on the lettuce. At one point I looked down and realized that I was eating a plate of food that might be eaten on a diet. Imagine my chagrin. Sometimes, when I write about fat politics I'm angry. Whether or not I can lose weight is not the issue. The issues are about jobs and housing and family life and access and health care and being able to walk down the street and not feel hated. When I tell my thin and average size friends about things that have been said to me they are stunned. They don't imagine that people are as hateful as they are. Sometimes when I write about fat politics I'm sad. Or hurt. Today. I'm really OK. I had a nice day yesterday. I got some sleep. I'm eating strawberries and blueberries and yoghurt and a bran muffin. I'm drinking green tea. Deb and I are going shopping so I've have good food later. Maybe I'll eat cookies, or cake, or candy, or more ice cream, oh my. Maybe I won't. I'll do what I do. It's just. My life. My body. I was reading an interview someone did with Camus in which he talked about the way Marxists thought human nature would be formed in the classless society of the future. He said they rejected "the man of today in the name of the man of the future." He talked about mystification. And I though about how often, in my younger life, I imagined a future self. A thinner self. A more loveable self. I thought about the dream state in which I constructed a self. Today I just am. Fat. And me. All the things about me. Whatever qualities of wisdom, or grace, or insight, or humor, or petulance, or darkness, or jealousy, or charm, whatever qualities describe me, all the shadows and all the light, live in this body. Today. I sing this body electric. Make no mistake. Somewhere today a fat kid is being bullied and the well intentioned health professionals don't get how their articulation of the fat body makes that possible. Somewhere someone is hunched over a toilet sticking their finger down their throat. Somewhere, someone is being prepared for costly surgery that will change the ability of their bodies to digest food, forever. Somewhere, today, someone is making a choice not to flirt, apply for a job, see a doctor about a pain, attend a film, because their body doesn't fit. And they don't want to feel the hatred. Again. And you who stand behind them in the grocery line and assess their purchases for moral content are part of the problem. You who talk about the five pounds you put on and how you simply must resist the urge to have that cookie after dinner are part of the problem. You who see fat people and look away and never really look. Never really see. So we have a day. When we say no more.
Can America be America? Has it ever been? On the Sixty Minutes II they said that one of the guys in the pictures was a prison guard here, in this country. I don't think it's useful to compare oppressions but I'm wondering if the people who have done time in American prisons think that those pictures reflect a truth about who we are.
Can America be America? I am a daughter of America. I find no pride in that lineage. I feel a pain so constant that it has become part of what it means to be American. And. Somehow.
If you go to the Backtalk section of Mother Jones this month you'll see a letter from me. It is on line right now but I don't know how long it will be. The bit they published was about a third of what I wrote. And the box of factoids I was responding to isn't on line so it's difficult to get the context unless you have the magazine. I don't really care that they cut it down but they titled it Spanking "Fat America". Can that be any more dismissive? The box of factoids was about how fat Americans are and how there is a developing market place catering to them. The tone of each factoid was as dismissive as the title they gave my post. They called out Ample Stuff, referring to it as the Whole Girth Catalogue and mentioning specific products. Here's the list. 1) Airline seat belt extenders. Clearly the airline industry doesn't care about my safety, my comfort, or my right to get anywhere. And yes it is a guaranteed right. Given that, if I want to drop the SIXTY SIX dollars so that I can know I will have some security why should Mother Jones question Ample Stuff and not the airline industry? When I fly I ask for an extension. Sometimes I get them handed to me in a surreptitious manner not unlike the way people used to pass me bindles of coke. Other times I have ask two or three times. 2) Scales. I'm not sure why anyone owns a scale but I know there are health issues for which tracking weight loss and gain is important. 3) Fanny packs and wearable napkins. And that's a problem because? 4)Sock installers, lotion appliers and leg lifters. The first time I saw some of these thing was when my stepfather lost some ability to move. He isn't fat. 5)Porta-bidets. And this one was written about with the adjective (depressingly). Mother Jones apparently doesn't think people should have the tools they need to care for themselves. Or maybe it's just fat people that shouldn't have them. The second factoid was about theaters and stadiums widening seats and instituting person-of-size sections. Because, I suppose, fat people shouldn't go to the theater, or sports events. The third was about the FAA upping its estimate of the average passenger weight. The forth was about hospitals rolling out sturdier gurneys, operating tables, wheelchairs, walkers and bigger gowns. And they mention that the hospitals are doing this because of the boom in gastric bypass operations. I'd actually like to think that hospitals would have those things so that I can be provided adequate medical care and not because they have a costly and problematic surgery they want to sell. Berkline got a slap because their recliners can bear 600 pounds and Mc Donalds took a hit because of their adult Happy Meals. What Are You Looking At? was mentioned. I could not for the life of me figure out what they were saying by putting all these things in a little set apart box. Chairs are bad, diet meals are bad, people telling their stories is bad. It's just all bad if it has to do with fat people. Freedom Paradise was mentioned. Coffins were mentioned. Jim Hightower, someone who I generally admire and agree with, doesn't like big coffins either. You know how fat people are buried if they don't fit in the coffin? They are cut into pieces. I do get it. Mother Jones wants me to quit eating fast food and start working out. And then the world can be one size fits all and won't that be better? I questioned the tone of what they wrote. They published my letter with a title just as quippy and disrespectful. While I was looking at the Mother Jones I saw an ad for the ACLU in which they talk about not being Americans who think it's ever cool to hate or to silently tolerate prejudice. They work for the day when people are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, which is of course a quote. I work for the day when the character of a person is not measured by the size of their ass. I always think about Victoria. She was always a large woman but one day she just began to gain weight and couldn't get it to stop. After three years of having doctors tell her that she should eat less and exercise more she was finally diagnosed with Hypothyroidism and over five million people in this country have the same condition. Five million people being told to get up off their couches and stop eating cake. She was also diagnosed with PCOS. And she writes about Cushing Syndrome. I imagine she might need some of the Ample Stuff products. And I imagine it is depressing for her sometimes. I think about Anamarie who was taken from her home because she was a fat child. Taken from her home. Her parents were on Good Morning America. The press went wild reporting on how these parents let their child get so fat and now the public health officials had to save her. Where is Good Morning America now? Now that she has been returned to her home, is still fat and now that she and her family are trying to mend from the trauma of being scapegoated. They think she may have a problem with Leptin. They think many fat people have a problem with Leptin. But they still tell the fat people to eat less and move more. They don't ask how much they eat or move. They assume. There's a woman who goes to the fat swim. She wears a lime green two piece bathing suit and she has beautiful mocha skin. She's so beautiful. She and I have talked about her issues with compulsive overeating. She's told me stories of her childhood and how food was given and withheld. She has a great life right now. She has a man who adores her and thinks she's gorgeous. She has a job and a home and she's active. And she struggles with her eating. It isn't even about losing weight. She just knows she has a problem. If she were an alcoholic or a drug addict she might get some compassion. But she's fat. I asked Paul Campos if he thought the left was more fat hating than the right and he said, "I think it's quite possible that the left is more fat phobic than the right in America, because much of the left tends to be culturally puritanical, and fat hatred is in large part a product of quasi-puritanical anxieties about indulgence, over-consumption, and lack of control. On the other hand, the right is pretty fat-phobic." Well. Where does that leave me? Paul recently linked the letters page at Salon on which the letters are as hateful as they come. He suggested we write a letter. And I've been trying to write one. But I'm tired. I don't know what to say to someone who doesn't want to pay the rising cost of public health care caused by "the obese". How is that rising cost calculated? Are the people with failing endocrine systems factored into those numbers? Are the people spending money to have their stomachs mutilated in that rising cost? And what about the medical cost of doctors treating people for obesity while they die from a brain tumor or a pituitary tumor? There are problems. We know that there are problems. There is fast food and too many screens and not enough movement and high fructose corn syrup and on and on and on. I'm not wiling to do my study trumps your study. Campos is doing that. Sandy Swartz is doing that. Glenn Gaesser is doing that. All nice thin people. It's not my area. There is more than one story to be told about why people are fat. And when all the stories are told it will still not be cool to hate. Can I have a fanny pack that fits if I want one? I think of all the magic pills. Spanking the fat people? I'm tired. I'm just fucking tired. I was sitting here wondering what I could write about this morning. I'm feeling worn and dry. And then I heard a bit on NPR. Essayist for NPR. How do you get that gig? A friend of mine told me that she had a friend who wanted her to do little essays for NPR. You know, the ones you hear on All Things Considered. I read the piece I wrote about the SIMS to her and she said I should record it and send it in. So I did record it. And I wrote and recorded three others. She called her friend (the one with the connection to NPR) and he said they don't do those anymore. I spent some time trying to figure out where to send them. I never did figure it out. The bit I heard this morning was about favorite food that Mother's make. I've been getting some encouragement to do food writing and I like to do food writing. And listening to the NPR essayist (do I sound competitive?) (I am) it occurred to me that I could write about my mother and food. There are problems. Heh. My mother didn't do the cooking when I was growing up. We lived with her parents. Grandmom did the cooking and it wasn't great cooking. I have lots of food memories but not about the food itself. More the context in which we ate. I remember chipped ham sandwiches on pasty hamburger buns after church and rootbeer floats on hot summer nights. My cousins remember Grandmom's meat loaf with affection. I remember hiding it in my napkin and smuggling it to the trash can. What I remember most about food and my mom was her sitting at the table with a glass of Metrical while the rest of us ate macaroni and cheese. I remember she and I eating plates full of scrambled eggs on Atkins and bowls of rice on Pritiken. Oh but then. My mother baked. She still does. She makes beautiful cookies and perfect pie crust. And we ate them with the lust that only a person who has been living on scrambled eggs and celery for a month can eat. Mom is a recipe cook. It drives her crazy to watch me cook. She measures everything. I measure nothing. I measure when I bake but not with the precision that she does. When I visit now I do most of the cooking. I taught her how to make risotto and she brags to me every time she does. I roast potatoes a lot. Yukon golds and French Fingerlings. She loves them but she forgets about them. She'll call me sometimes to ask what she should make for dinner. I watched Big Fish last night. On GK's recommendation. I made myself a bowl full of arugula, beets that I had marinated in Balsamic Vinegar and goat cheese and I cut a thick slice of Pane Di Altamura. Beets always seem to make my blood feel stronger. And I settled into my chair and watched the movie. Maybe there's a moment when we stop thinking so much about what we wished our parents were. And maybe there's a way to connect with them, even when we aren't what they wish we were. Maybe it's the relationship in which we most learn how to love beyond our needs and wants. I'm not sure yet. And maybe the reason I'm not an essayist for NPR is because I try to write about food and mom and end up in doubt and reverie. Mom did make a thing that I like. But only when she makes it. It's called Tijuana Hash. And, oddly enough, I found a recipe on line. I have never made it and I doubt I ever will but Mom makes it when I go there. And I love it. Because there are these intersections in relationships. Places where you can only meet up with that one person. Monday Monday. Can't trust that day. On Sunday I usually watch some of the political talk shows but there's been so much equivocation about the Iraqi POWs. I just didn't want to hear any more. Even on the radio there was a guy talking about how much the need to validate the reason for the war may have created the environment for the abuse. Generally I like to err on the side of understanding. I may even agree with some of the perspective. But come on.
So I turned it all off. Cleaned and cooked and listened to music. Read for awhile. But I wanted to watch Sixties Minutes because I knew Wally Lamb was going to be on. I'd seen him on Book TV last year with a few of the women from the Connecticut prison where he teaches a writing workshop. They were reading from the book he'd helped them to put together. I got it and it is now in the every growing pile of soon to be read. Each one of them calling to me. Read me. Read me. The women made some money for the book and the Attorney General of Connecticut decided to charge them for their room and board at prison. Mean spirited. Mean. Mean spirited.
Mumia is on Democracy Now talking about the guard I mentioned the other day. I can't hear any more about how what happened at Abu Ghraib doesn't represent who we are. The other story on Sixty Minutes was about Hugh Thompson. A soldier. A great man. A man who knew when wrong was wrong. I turned off the TV and went back to the book. This morning the dove who serves as my alarm clock decided I should be awake at 6:00. I didn't sleep well last night and the coo coo coo cooing called me from my dreams too early and too insistently. But I knew I needed to get up. I need to be focused and get some stuff done today. Monday Monday. Sometimes it just works out that way. The other day Whiskey River had a set of quotes about vision. I've been thinking about them. On Sunday I was dusting things on my dresser and I looked up into the mirror. I had an ugly moment. I just thought I was ugly. I made an effort to see differently but to no avail. I was just ugly. Nothing I could do about it. Last night, while I was flossing, I noticed the way my hair was falling and it looked so perfect. I hadn't brushed it, or anything. It was just falling in this beautiful line. And then I saw my eyes and my mouth and it all fit together so well. I was so beautiful. The same face that was so ugly the day before. And yet. It seems pretty arbitrary. But I've actually worked on what happens when I look in the mirror. I think women get early training in visual dissection. Looking in the mirror is a mediation on what's wrong. And I think it's getting worse for men. I see commercials for hair plugs and six pack abs (an oxymoron if ever there was one) and teeth whiter and I wonder how men shake it off. There are also plenty of images of less than perfect men with highly idealized women and wealth and fame and on and on. The message is different. But there's no doubt that's it's getting worse for men. Actually, I remember old movies in which the light would spark Erroll Flynn's teeth. Those moments when I'm ugly don't hit me as hard as they used to. I know they will pass. But they do hit me. It's not just about vanity. I read job descriptions that say - must present well. What does that mean? I want vision that comes from my whole self.
I want vision that sees ugly and beauty in a constant dance. Mostly I want vision. I want to see.
These are the places I go for vision. Writers understand that action is seldom direct. You write your books. You scatter your seeds. Rats might eat them, or they might just rot. In California, some seeds lie dormant for decades because they only germinate after fire. -Rebecca Solnit Michael does this really cool word of the day thing. It's always interesting but today, it's just the best. I must use it daily. Agnus and Fennela? I LOVE that! My post of the morning was about vision. Tonight all I can think is ... ...an eye for an eye. Leaving the whole world blind. I was late getting out the door this morning. Not that late. But public transportation is a worry so I travel early. I waited at the first bus stop for ten minutes and the second bus stop for ten minutes. Things were moving along. And then. The driver was shouting at someone because they hadn't paid. I was reading and trying to ignore it all but that wasn't going to happen. It got louder and more contentious. The driver was saying he wasn't going to start the bus until the guy paid. I've lived through this particular drama before so I tried to focus on my book. It felt like there was some thing going on that I best stay out of. Something between men. Something about territory. The woman in front of me got up and paid the fare. The driver got things moving again. I told her I wanted to pitch in and gave her some change. She said she was working two jobs and was on her way home and just wanted to get there. The fellow who was at the heart of all this mess stumbled up to thank her. The smell of gin filled the air. She looked at me. I looked at her. She said, "I just want to be home." I got to yoga in plenty of time. I had a hard time concentrating in class. Sally kept saying things about letting it all go and being in the moment. Yeah. The moment. Right. But I did my best. We were working on Eagle pose. Cough. I can't exactly do it. Exactly. After class I went to Yum Yum for lunch with Marie. It was great to see her. The waiters adore her. They came running with her Cokewithlotsofice the minute she walked in. She has the bluest eyes and the whitest teeth and a spirit that fills up the room. I decided to take the 33 to the Castro so that I could catch the F. Waited for fifteen minutes. The bus lumbered past Mission high where the students wear their grief on plastic signs around their necks that say we love you Ray. I love you too Ray. There's a poem by Edith Jenkins carved into the concrete by the bus stop.
Ten minutes more. For the bus driver. He let us on and then we waited ten minutes more before he started up. A tall man with long hair was talking about the beheading in a manner just too close to manic. A woman sat with her baby on her back. The baby was wearing fatigues. We rounded the corner and I looked at the stone face of the Pottery Barn in which there is an area, kind of high up, cut in, not unlike what might have held a clock. But in which there is a chair. I thought I heard Guy whispering in my ear. I tucked in with my book. An hour later I was home. I'm. Hmmm. I'm antsy. Where can i? How can I? Hmmm. No where to go with all of this. Just these moments of grace and moments of grief and moments of rage. And me. Feeling my way along. I'm looking for someone to change my life I'm looking for a miracle in my life And if you could see what it's done to me to lose the love I knew you'd safely lead me through.
My attempt at a lucid and impeccable life. Is still mostly attempt. Lucidity? I live in a dream. Margaret sent me a link to pictures of her wedding a while ago. She was a gorgeous bride. The family was gorgeous. Even the church was gorgeous. As I looked at the photos I thought about how I'd never imagined myself in a wedding. Not even as a kid. It might be because I was fat but I think it was about something else. Somehow I knew that would be alone. I guess that sounds like I believe in destiny and I do and I don't. I believe in something more along the lines of probable reality. We make choices and veer to the left. Or the right. But I never did imagine myself in a wedding. And it never made me sad. It just seemed like the way it was. I like weddings. I like ritual and ceremony. I like public displays of affection. And I also think weddings can be costly and fraught with family strife. There are too many symbols of property. Too much paraphernalia. People get caught up in trying to have something perfect. And perfect costs about the same amount as a car. Or more. Weddings have always seemed like an acid trip to me. Everything is heightened. Shiny. Distorted. My stepfather came up to me at my cousins wedding and told me that if I caught the bouquet it would freak out my mother. I asked her if that was true and she said something vague about wanting me to have a man that would treat me right. The implication was that I wouldn't be able to find one. And that may have been about me being fat. Or maybe it was about my dad. |
