post debate anxiety

It is so clear to me that this election has almost nothing to do with the issues, with thinking. The spin is so pronounced, so effective, that all the bush administration has to do is to say, "We won," and that's what the news whores spout. Reminds me of Patrick Stewart as the Star Trek captain saying: "Make it so." People are such sheep.

Say it ain't so.

I watched the debate, of course, but it was torture. I imagine being one of those on the fence (I have an active imagination) and what my response would be if I felt the current president had any credibility. If, last night, the question was raised whether he would do another preemptive strike, and he said, "golly gee whiz I hope not" and this morning a battleship sets [figurative] sail for Korea, am i missing something? I am so paranoid that I can see the following: Bush gets back from the debate, says, "Fuck that anti-nuculer asshole, heh, heh, heh.... I'll show him." and sends a boat to straighten out Korea before talking to anyone. Its Beavis and Butthead. And I want to write a letter to Jim Lehrer, telling him not to coach the president like he did.... "Hey, Psssst, GW, he used the T word again. He said "truth" you gonna let that get by ya???"

I am venting. I am St. Helen.

On a more positive note, I loved what Kerry did with the set-up question about character. The "certainty" answer. It was well put and did not belabor the obvious or give moderator (or the audience) the blood they were looking for. He made some nice direct hits, but I don't know who listens, really. They just wait for the spin to tell them what they think.

I am not a saint, really.

On a more/less volcanic note: How serious is this? In a news era where they warn about rain in springtime and snow in winter, what am I supposed to think? What if the mountain blows and I don't have a Y2K-sized stash of tuna and peanut butter? All I know for sure is that I'll need to wash my truck or it will be coated with cement. It is so hard to know what to take seriously. I guess I should get some masks and water stashed for the eventual catastrophe. But in geologic time, what does 70% mean?

detachment

I miss my son. I asked him how his drinking was going. "...coming right along," he said. We both laughed. No way to get in front of that train. I know where it goes, and how fast, and how much scenery I missed along the way.

He's alright.

He's the only one I miss. I bought him some Jelly Belly's and am putting together a care package like a. does. I'm slow, though. He may get it by Christmas, if I don't eat the jelly beans first.

daytime TV

Its really early and I'm vascillating between going to Eastside Sunrise and sitting on my widening ass and writing this damn blog. Damned. Whatever. I don't know the appropriate usage here. Again, in the throes of unemployment, I am watching too much daytime TV. And here's the thing: I think Dr. Phil is blowing it. I think he's taking his one shot at fame and taking it just the teensiest bit too seriously. He's basically a good therapist, I think. I like the way he generally declines the dark recesses of the past and tries to get to what is going on right now, which, I think, undoes some of the victimology created by Oprah and her ilk, who would lay all blame at the feet of whomever did 'em wrong and never think about the poor victim holding the bottle/spoon as it were. Anyway, shit. Its way to early for this. But this week, he had Cher on the show, and yesterday, the Bush's. George and Susie or Barbara or Laura or whatever her name is. Parents of the fucking year. Had he interviewed Cher on his own, that would have been one thing, but he drug his wide-eyed little wife up on stage with him in that single-handed effort he is making to save the nuclear family, his cute little wife who maintains she's had no work done, but who's face is stretching like a nylon mask across her bone structure, looking so great at 50. Now, I don't hold it against her, just the lying. And she doesn't seem like a liar, but again, I digress. So he has his wife up there, interviewing Cher as though they were lifelong best friends. Same with George and Laura. The folksy, down-home interview style has got to go. It is not his strength. And Cher, who I love, have always loved, may be alot of things, but brilliant? No. Deep? Not so much. And there was the good Dr. Phil sucking up to Hollywood in a way I hadn't seen so far. Bringing Cher on as the epitome of single (well, occasionally) motherhood was so far off I was surprised, and the sucking up. Jeez. I liked watching Dr. Phil, but now that he has taken on The Family, that decomposing but universal institution, as though his TV show has the power to effect some kind of lasting change, is noble, but silly. And the wife and kids, by sheer proximity, do not have any talent at all. He's got his son authoring books to teens, his wife selling collagen boosting creams (that's a lie, she did a show last year talking about the products she uses... just prior to the face lift, I think.) Anyhow, its the Dr. Phil Show, not Dr. Phil and all his relatives Show.

I need a job.

I'll just go to Eastside. Screw it.

back

Okay. I think I can do a running commentary of my weekend. I started out with a bang Saturday morning by locking myself out of the house. K is in Hillsboro, so no help there. Fortunately, I had packed some things the night before because I knew I'd have to ride the Maxx out there and leave for the coast from Hillsboro, and didn't want to carry shit on the train. Fortunately, yes, but not enough. I'd jumped ou tof bed early and threw on my old paint shirt, good levis, and flannel clogs thinking I'd change when I got back from the Pharmacy. In case you don't know, I change clothes ten times a day, so it was hard for me to look like shit for a long time in public. My hair was thrashed, my ego bruised. The homeless people downtown were sidling up next to me like I belonged. There was a time I did, I'll admit it, but not lately.

But I'm getting ahead of myself....

After cussing and stomping and looking at the upstairs window like the laws of physics don't apply to me, as though gravity does not hold sway in my world and there is some remote possibility that I could find a way back into the fucking Fort Knox of my home, I found some measure of acceptance and wandered down to K&F for a fix. [Coffee. Don't freak out.] It is humorous to me -- pathetic, really-- to say "...I found a measure of acceptance." What else is there? Acceptance is the end of the line. It is the last house on the fucking block.

Anyway, there I was, sipping coffee as I walked toward the Division bus stop, an hour or more ahead of schedule. But the timing god's were with me. I hopped on the bus, considering a short shopping trip downtown at Ross's or something to change my paint shirt before getting on the Maxx. As I sat on the bus imagining the quick purchase of another black turtleneck, an SUV pulled right out in front of the bus and we smashed into it full-on. I was thrown into the rack of Trimet brochures and hit my head and shoulder, but no biggie. Everyone seemed fine as we rocked to a stop. No one injured. Until.... a mentally ill person (man? woman? hard to tell.... shaved head, unremarkable features, lotas jewelery though) started rocking and crying and holding her neck. My first thought was not, "Is she okay?" but, "Why didn't I think of that?" Some things just never go away. I determined, in a subtle but experience-based analysis, that she was a borderline, and this was perfect. It wasn't until the driver (young, inexperienced, female) started handing out cards for us to give her our names, that the homeless guy across the aisle said, "hey, me too..." The driver just nodded, seeing the whole thing unfold before her eyes. Another bus came along and took us all away. Some to the hospital, me to the Maxx line.

As I waited for the Maxx, (now I'm right on schedule -- no longer early) I noticed a peculiar advertisement on the train, a big painted mural along one side. It said:

Nod off in Portland, wake up in Europe.

I've never nodded off in Portland. Now, Central Point, Jacksonville, that's another story. Lots of times in Coosbay, as far south as San Jose, Seattle to the North, but never Portland. And, for the record, I hope I never do.

Anyway, no time to shop for a new shirt and there I was... one of many, coffee stains running down my Levi's. No socks.

We made it to the coast okay, got a nice room with a view for a change, and I spent the next day wandering around the Oregon Coast Aquarium . The link is not to the aquarium, which should be easy to access, but to a photograph of the most remarkable creature there, imho.

Well, K got his 2 halibut after a day of near misses, and if I hear one more person say, "That's why its called fishin', not catchin'," I'll puke. I'm no tourist. I live here.

So, I'm home, unemployed and just bagged up about 35 pounds of halibut to freeze. Lotsa fish. Asia, call me if you want some.

invitations

There is no better time to write than when the dishes need to be done and the layers of dust that drifted in and will not drift out blanket every surface of my home. There is no more creative space than that created by avoidance. My own disturbed version of nirvana. And there is so much to do.... we are leaving for Newport in a minute, three hours really, and I need to run up to Riteaid and get K a seasick patch. He's going after more halibut--those great flat fish that cover the bottom of the sea some thirty miles out, all in a little cluster like there wasn't plenty of ocean bottom to go around. I remember going to the beach with Debra one time. She had a red something.... firebird? corvette? something flashy that she really thought made up for other physical shortcomings. (Now, if you're thinking my red truck serves a similar purpose, you'd be wrong. I'm going on record to say this: I wanted a white one.) So there we were, in Brookings, a sand wind blowing us down the beach. No one else was around. A perfectly good day for girl talk. We tossed down our blanket under the shelter of one of the many big rocks and leaned back to enjoy the sun. Not five minutes later, just as the gossip was getting good, a couple walked clear across the vacant sand, past miles of similar rock and flapped their blanket down right next to ours. Touching it, actually. Debra, in a rare moment, turned to them and said: "Big beach, eh?"

Anyway, we'll spend the night in some sleazy motel and he'll leave in the morning and I'm going shopping. With out much money anymore, but that's okay. I used to take five bucks and try to find the best candleholder I could.

Last night the lama told us about swallows gathering before they head south to Capistrano or wherever it is they go. Some woman had asked the monks to come to a cornfield to watch the gathering, and when they got there, several swallows were perched along some of the telephone lines, but not many, and my lama was disappointed. He thought she had exaggerated. Thought she'd called it wrong. This was no natural wonder at all. They waited, then the swallows began to come from all over. An estimated quarter million began to swarm above the cornfield, and as the sun went down behind them, behind the world, they swirled in the reddening sky, dipping and turning in that way they have, and as the light faded, they settled to sleep in the cornfield. It was worth waiting for.

I wonder how it is that monks get invited to watch the swallows-- that people think of the monks that way -- that they would take time out of their vespers to wait for a gathering of birds and I wouldn't.

I can't control my memories anymore.

perception

Two women are walking on opposite sides of a river.
One calls out to the other, "How do I get to the other side?"
Then comes the reply... "You're on the other side."

Ah.

I knew that.

the job hunt and salmon quiche

It is on in earnest now, the search for gainful employment. It surprises me, and should not, that no one here knows how wonderful I am. The height of self-involvement. The thing is, I have a great job. Just not yet. And between now and spring, well, that's alot of days, alot of house payments, and a thin holiday season. So, I need to find a big job for a short time.

We want to go to Hawaii. No -- I think we are going to go to Hawaii. And pretty soon. So, I'd better stop with the sugar and break out the yoga ball more than one day in a row. I'll fill out applications and tell them I can work any days except for the ones I'm in Hawaii. That should go over big. Yeah. I've spent the past eleven YEARS interviewing and hiring people, and the greatest fun is when they write: "any shift, any day" on the app, then during the first week of employement, ask for a month off to go to Tahiti, a trip for which they have non-refundable tickets, that they are certain they told you about during the interview, and besides, they really can't work weekends, and blah, blah, blah. And I am applying for a job in human resources. Glutton for punishment.

My honey is fishing tonight: the other woman, the water, the Mighty Columbia. Can't fight her -- wouldn't win. The call of the wild loon is strong, he told me once. And I've seen them, out on the island. But just now, the fish are hanging out on the Washington side of the river. Don't ask me why. And also, don't ask me how they know. Fishermen. They know everything. Just ask Greg. And the difference between going fishing with me and going fishing with Greg is this: I may have tits, but Greg has a boat. And the only way an Oregon fisherman can fish on the Washington side is in a boat. Or have some damned tall waders and good balance.

So I'm making salmon quiche.

Pie Crust.
(I use storebought. Line a pie pan with the crust and press shredded parmesan into it.)
Bake 8 min. on 425.

Turn oven down to 350

Saute
1/4 c. onion (diced small, saute until clear in 1 Tbsp. butter)
1/4 c. red pepper (diced small, saute briefly when onion almost done)

Layer
2 c. salmon (baked, leftover, whatever) break up and place on baked crust.
sprinkle onion/red pepper mixture over salmon
4 oz. cream cheese (cut little pieces, place over salmon)
1+ c. shredded swiss cheese (spread over...)
1/4 c. shredded parmesan cheese(same ...)

Combine and mix well:
4 eggs
1+1/2 c. half-half or cream
salt
pepper
dill

Pour over salmon/cheese layers
Bake 40-45 min. at 350 or until puffy and golden. Let cool 15 min. before serving.

Or, cover with foil and refrigerate until they get back with more damn fish.
Such is the life of a fisherman's wife.

girls

Sometimes being a step mom isn't all bad. The girls brought more girls over this weekend and a total of five made for a Maybelline kinda evening. They planned to attend the Clinton Street Rocky Horror show at midnight on Saturday, this time in costume. It is amazing what a year will do to a 14-15 year old mind/body. Last year, or was it just 6 months ago... they looked like boys. This time they were so beautiful, so vulnerable. I was able to contribute with a black tophat, a feather boa and lotsa eyeliner. The girls: a waitress with fishnets; a tophatted, dreadlocked princess; a surprising Rita Hayworth lookalike once the levis and backpack were gone and the makeup and slinky black slip-dress on; one in checkerboard tights, this one, a girl so thin, so very thin, so obsessed with Motrin it reminded me of obsessions to come-- who looked like a claymation character from The Nightmare Before Christmas and I remembered my husband asking me if someone used the towel laying next to the dryer to puke in... a bulemic in the house....; and finally, one so non-committal, so not willing to show her allegiance to black or any other color, refuing to admit she cared at all what she looked like, who reminded me of me. My parting words were: "Stick together. I trust your judgment, but there are other people out there who you can't control. Remember who you are."

As if they know.

And this is where the rubber meets the road for me. I was 14-15 once. I swear to God I was innocent. And innocence, like heroin, just doesn't keep when left out in the open air. It is so tough to love and protect something so fleeting. What I know is that at 14 I was interested in one thing only, well, two: Speed and Boone's Farm Apple Wine. I'd settle for Vivarin and Gallo Burgundy, and did more times than I'd like to admit, but my singleness of purpose was absolute. (is that redundant?) I'd rob Woodland Heights Market while I babysat for the owner and fill the trunk of my mother's pink and white Plymouth Plaza with cheap wine. Anyway, I ended up in jail at 14, and was really onto something big.

Their father was so frightened. They are good kids, who, slowly but surely, are getting away.

I'm so done with company. I want a weekend to do nothing. In a motel. With room-service.

Besides five girls and four visitors from the southland, we went to a wedding, complete with a mile high cake that looked like it was frosted with layers of pleated satin. It wasn't, of course. But we thought it was layers of white chocolate, which it was not. It was some sort of taffy, which really didn't go with cake at all, and was all the more disappointing for the wait. The sheer number of photo-ops made me grateful for our simple ceremony. The bride was pretty, the groom pretty too. Who knows whether it will work. She loves him, he seems better for it. It is tough not to see what I see. As for us... I married the only man I would ever consider marrying. We couldn't not get married. It was the only next thing to do. He kept asking and I finally heard him. I don't even care if it works out in the long run. It was an emotionally necessary marriage. I had to know life married to this particular man. I didn't want to get married. I didn't want to move. I still think it was probably a terrible idea. But it was the only idea left. Love is such a funny thing. So unavoidable. And who am I to say they don't have what we do. I love my life. I have had the best life of anybody I can think of. Who can say that? I spent enough time alone to endure the reality of spending the rest of my life with another person.

sleepyhead

I got up at 9:15. For me, that is either a sign of relaxation or depression, I'm not quite sure which. It feels like I lose half a day getting started this late. I made some coffee, strong and cold now, for my honey when he got up, then fell back to sleep on the sofa. The vortex is still there and it will get me if I'm not careful.

I started painting the bathroom yesterday. The built-in medicine cabinet, the woodwork around it. White. Off-white. Used to be a person could purchase a can of off-white paint. It isn't so simple anymore. There is a broad range of off-whites, yellow based, blue based, and as usual, I don't care. Not about that. I understand the difference, but the bathroom is so bad, so demolished, that any old paint is better than the current dishwater- gray. Not grey. GRAY. Like "the-old-gray-mare-she-ain't-what-she-used-to-be" gray. Pepto-bismol pink walls and ancient gray trim. Nice woodwork, though. Gotta give it that. So I will paint and paint and paint, and eventually, tear down the walls, or cover them with some water resistant panelling-type product from Lowe's or Home Despot for 49.99 a sheet. I want Cape Cod wainscoating. I shoulda been a Kennedy.

Home improvement, its my life. My husband gets so scared when I start in. He says, "What are you doing," and I say, "Improving your life, honey." His jaws lock and he plays his guitar louder. He thanks me later. Always. And in such nice ways.

I miss you Lorretta. Just for the books. I got the baby back/front pack for Hannah. I know the blog isn't the place for this.

Well, we have the girls this weekend, and company besides. Nocean and her boyfriend and their kids will be here Saturday. And a wedding to go to. Life is good. At least it isn't dear mother in law. She is back home, and is a sweetheart. Asia and I were talking about the lack of anonymity, the up and downside of a blog. We are exhibitionists, we writers... ah, admit it. I censor myself in the event my disparaging remarks will come back to haunt me. Anne Lamott said once that you can write whatever you want about the dead.

So, about my ex-husband....

Nah. Not that interesting anymore. I didn't kill him.

I have to, want to, am going to, sell my truck. A collective, "ahh, nooooo..." should arise from those who know how much I have loved that shiny red F-150. I've put more miles on it than I should have in the few short years I've had it. Honey-miles. The product of a long-distance relationship. High mileage. Low value. I'm putting it in the paper with my bike and hoping for someone who will love it like I have.

Speaking of honey miles.... my husband just called and asked me to clean out his closet and take everything I disapprove of to Goodwill before he sees it and then he'll never know what hit him. What I disapprove of.... who me? Disapprove???? WHAT A SET-UP!! Oh, wait... there's a purple shirt.... oh, god, a satin vest..... yeah.... I'm going for it.

kubler-ross

She died recently, and I wanted to comment on her life before it is too long past and my comments irrelevant. I went to see her in 1975 or so, maybe 1976. She was just beginning then, beginning to be heard in nursing home land, which is where I spent eight hours of most days: four of them sobering up, the next four planning the next ambush on my sanity. She did a three day seminar which I was allowed to attend. What I remember is when she asked the crowd (nurses, nurses aides, some physicians) "What is it that you think when you walk into the room of a terminal patient? What is your real, gut level thought?" The answers ranged from the predictable "compassion" to the nearly brave "fear." She allowed the responses, then said, "Don't you really think, 'Don't die on me'?" I was with her all the way.

She influenced my experience of the dying and for that I am grateful. What I learned from her directly, beyond the stages of grief, is that there is no right or wrong way to die or to respond to dying. And she didn't believe, like many think, in euthanaisa. She maintained that love is the answer. A hopeful position to be sure. And for the unloved? Institutionalized love. Well, in my experience, that's hard to come by. And so my position on euthanizing human beings is alot like my other positions. I don't care so much about that. It happens all the time, in hospitals, in nursing homes, where professionals do the "slow walk" away from a person taking the final breaths. There are tacit agreements, as there should be, between physician and patient, that when the time comes, the time comes. The agreement that allowing death is not stopping life. It isn't front page news. And legislating something so personal, as we would with other personal matters, is questionable.

There. Bye bye Liz.

Scully's

We went there last night. A crack whore offered to watch the truck for us as the rest of the junkies on the street corner skulked in the shadows. It's insured, I thought. This has not always been the case. The meeting was reminiscent of my humble beginnings, now so long long ago. Smoke hanging like drapes from the ceiling, a slow mottled stain dripping down the windows, adding to the anonymity of it all. They don't hold hands. They don't do the "Hi, someone" greeting. They read from the book. They acknowlege up front that most of what is said is shit.

I didn't used to care. I didn't used to be so well.

Point is, was a time I didn't notice the difference between smoke filled rooms of sick people, people whose sickness still showed, maybe always would, because of the nearness to, the similarity to, the bars in which I was so accustomed to spending my time. Like Elm St. in Medford, Scully's is no further removed from any day room in any mental hospital than the Jubilee Club was on a busy night back in the day. Now, I spend a good deal of my time in well tended rooms with well tended people who have learned to dress well, hide the soul-sickness which is our shared disease. We are so well.

We are better. Many of us are. I am.

I am struggling to stay with them, to feel like one of many, neither above or below. Even. Even is hard for me. The lack of contrast is confusing and I forget who I am, why I am there.

Last night a woman at Scully's said the thing I needed to hear. "You can see it in the birds," she said. "Big ones, long wings floating on the air, soaring around like it was so easy. And the little ones," she continued, painting another layer of chrome nail polish produced from the many distractions in her basket of toys, her purse, her portable home that was nearly unpacked beside her, "the little ones flap so hard. They really have to work to stay up there, when all they really have to do is relax and float on the breeze."

I have a wonderful life, but I've been busily flapping lately.

bikes and more bikes

I overslept. Luxury of the unemployed. I've been hunting for jobs online, I've been through the paper, the Sunday Oregonian, a tome of pulp, looking for just the right job. I have a job, but not just yet, and the time between will get thin without some kind of income.

We went out to shoot pool Saturday night, our first night alone in so so so long. The bikers were out, the Dead Baby bikers, of Seattle, and C.H.U.N.K. 666 of SE Portland. I've been seeing their bikes around the neighborhood, tremendous bastardizations of bicycles, stretched and stacked frames... unimaginable. I do like their motto (to the warmongers) No, YOU calm down.

Anyway, I'd wondered where the bikes came from, and now I know.

ahhhhh

I have my home to myself. Ourselves. We are home. And the funny thing is I guess it took this event-- this longitudinal fucking study of my ability to endure company-- to make me feel at home. I don't think I've ever felt more HERE than I do at this moment. But, as moments will be, fickle, fleeting and finicky, it, like all things, must pass.

I miss George Harrison. I never knew him personally, but he was my favorite Beatle. I always liked knowing he was on the same planet at the same time as me.

Wow! Now I have time, no job and a new book. That sounds like heaven to me. It may be. It is a mystery book, not a literary masterpiece, but a piece of escapist tripe that I am happy to lay back and read. I should be so lucky to write one.

Oh, that's right. I did.

Well, I guess it is the awareness of the time I have that fills it with possibility. I have had time all along. As much or little as anyone. But my head has been so full of adjustment, so preoccupied with territory and how to move about in my new life, that I've been relatively paralyzed. But take it away from me with 40 days and 40 nights of mother-in-law, and suddenly, I'm missing something. I had a life. I'm certain of it. It must be around here somewhere.

I don't know what to wear. Here, it is cold until about noon, then really warm. I'm dying to wear turtlenecks, and do, but I choke come 70 degrees or more. Muggy. Balmy. Or, as we used to say in the high school days when we said so much and did so little: Ball me weather. Ah. Those weren't the days at all.

I'm rambling. I have nothing to say and will prove it.

Two of my very best girlfriends called (and emailed) me today. God, I love those women. Kelly and Lorretta. I miss them. I knew I would, I just didn't realize when I left that they are not replaceable. Well, I may have realized it then, but lost it. I am not making new friends at any alarming rate. And I really want to let myself down off the cross about all that. I think I have blathered on before about how I see attachment at this point in my life. The mid point. I have friends, and we have been through some big shit together. Big shit. Our shit. And the bonds that were forged are strong. We have survived time, and in some cases, distance. And now, the distance is mine, and the friendships continue to be strong. I don't believe that this is the time in life when girlfriends are made. And my conclusion, this morning, this fickle, fleeting moment, is that -- (oh shit its gone already) OH, I remember... It isn't that I'm lonely, I am not. I am hounded by expectations of connection, and what it would be to be like in a new place. I thought I would see people I wanted to connect to, and then, decide when to connect. But I haven't. And the places I go are full of people. And I was wrong.

Boy oh boy.

friday friday

She leaves tomorrow. She doesn't get it that when I'm sitting here, doing this, I don't want to talk.

paused

I could sit here another year, another series of days (ah... too many years and not enough days) without writing down the things I see. I could continue to pretend that happiness is a barrier to creativity, that only the Hemingways -- drunk and maudlin-- have the ear and voice of the muse. But I have so little to compare this to, so little sense of where normal will be when I become accustomed to loving so much, to feeling so abandoned to this thing, so lost in it-- and at the same time, found. I wonder where my feet will be when I near whatever ground is left-- when morning at Sauvie's Island, cold mist rising from big water slapping slapping sand, waiting for the bell to ring, him obsessed with fishing, me obsessed with him, just happy to be along for the ride-- when that ground rises to meet me. I must must must figure out how to keep the pen moving in the presence of contentment and suspension of all known things. To create still the fiction of my soul, to allow the words to come through-- even when I know he's looking.

Such is the pressure of an audience.

dead heading

Not the grateful ones. The yard. Its getting near time. I chopped down the tomato trees today, small unfinshed orbs rotting on the vines. I weeded the roses one last time and cut them back just a little. The squirrels are scurrying about with their walnuts, storing them in the camelia and the rain gutters, leaving them in the middle of the street to be shot like a bullet at unwary coffee drinkers from beneath the tire of a passing bicyclist. Whew.

Well, I pretty much hate my bike. I'm learning, though. I know now that I want gears, and now I have learned another important thing: the weight of the bike matters. Big Bertha. Sigh if you must, you know-it-alls. Sigh with the weight of knowing all along what I just learned: cute isn't everything. Be proud of your wealth of information. I still maintain I have the corner on useless trivia. Did you know, for example, that if you fold layers of tissue paper in with your clothes when packing, that they won't be wrinkled when you get where you're going? Well, they won't. And now you know what I know. I'll sell the Bertha at a tidy profit because it is cute, and some shallow-but-nice person will likely come along and be waylaid by its good looks. You wait. But I may keep it for a Hawthorne Cruiser because cute may not be everything, but have you been to Hawthorne? Everybody's posing. And I may want two bikes. One for looks and one for speed. Because if I've proven anything, its that not only am I shallow, I am materialistic.

Have I mentioned how hard it is for me to send birthday cards? To my right>>> right there>>> is a calendar with birthdays scheduled to pop up and remind me of special dates. Right now there are four. Have you priced cards? Good ones can cost five bucks. I should really start making them. I'm good at it. But in my family, I'm known for Christmas presents at Easter and I think, now that I'm married, why break tradition? Why be prompt and appropriate? They'll start expecting good behavior and I can't have that. I had to purchase a card for my husband's father yesterday. My father-in-law. My father-out-law. It had to be on time. Today, I had lunch with my MIL's sisters. Yes, she is still with us. Until Saturday morning.

I bought brush cleaner, disposable palettes and a new oil brush. I'm beginning a painting for the house. That should be something to discuss. I try to learn how to take digital pictures and load them in here, then you can see it in process. I'm thinking of a collage-like thing, with metal, letters and words woven into it. And my favorite photograph of a woman holding a bird in her hand, illustrating the age-old point: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Sunday

A four day weekend. We rafted the Clackamas yesterday. It is a slow float. A slow float to China. So many people in the group we floated with had innertubes. They looked so cold. Between us: the girls, their friend and us, we had three rafts. Its a little sillly, the way those things are marketed. For instance, ours is a five-man Sevylor. They'd have to be five pretty damned small men. Five midgets (dwarves, little people... what is proper these days?) would be hard-pressed to make it work. Then again, we are prone to reclining. Prone to being supine. Get it? I barely got wet, which is good because it was fucking cold. Fucking cold. Fucking hot. You can't please me. Fucking medium.

Today I will meet with some little girl who is having some of the same troubles adjusting to her new life in portland and needing to do some of the same things with some of the same people as me. She is the daughter of an old friend and is having trouble fitting in. So we will be misfits together at my office-- the coffee shop down the street. Just when I was getting ready to bag it.

Rock Time

I am so unemployed. I really need to finish up that application and get it in the mail.... I've become one of many, a statistic, a ne'er-do-well. I'm sure the spelling is incorrect. You know how we ne'er-do-wells are.

We'll have a houseful this weekend: the girls plus one, the grandkids and their daddy. So, six extra by my count. My my my... as Lorretta says, my life has changed. And all for the better, as long as I can find time to jot down a few of my skittering thoughts from time to time. I'm back to time off with pay so will have more writing time for now.

We will raft the Clackamas River this weekend. Start with a hearty breakfast of thin, salty ham and runny eggs at Denny's, all topped with a thick layer of cornstarch gravy flavored with the tiniest bit of sausage. And the ambience.... orange and yellow vinyl at last glance, slick seats, tuck and roll, with background music from the, what? Fifties? Is that when, like, Elvis and those guys were happening? It was before my rock time.

We do measure things in rock time. I remember first being aware of music when I was eight and Ricky Nelson was happening. Travellin' Man. I remember thinking that having a girl in every port was disturbing when stirred in with my sunday school lessons. I was later to opt for the former. Not that I have a girl in every port -- lets not get that started -- but I did live in Charleston and made my way through a good percentage of the fishermen. Don't tell. I was one helluva girl in one sort-of port. There was a marina. There were boats. I made my little splash, got arrested and came home, tail between my legs, needles in my arm.

But back to rock time. The mean girls, who are markedly better just now (I think it is the company they keep. This one little snot they hang out with is nothing but trouble. Too cool to be anywhere or do anything. Which, as I recall from direct personal memory, is paralyzing....) Anyway... rock time. They are all into knowing all the words of Beatle songs. They hooked up the record player and played "I am the Walrus" backwards to hear "Paul is dead, miss him, miss him, miss him," which, as I recall, when played forward is something like: "Mblissm blissm blissm, habat sonnat chu chu." Its funny what you remember. I was a beatle officianado, to the extent a child without money can be. I was the first in my gradeschool to know about them. My older brother Marc brought home a small newsletter that I conscripted and carried in my science book and shared with my comrades. It was a big day for me. In that same classroom I heard on the radio that Jackie Kennedy was doing her nails. I remember thinking "who cares?" (This may have been the original sin, the first seed of my ambivalence, my sweet apathy. But, seriously, who does care?) And in that same classroom I heard that Kennedy was shot.

Did everyone watch our president-select last night? I hate to say it, but I'll bet he gets re-elected. He dishes up that American soup, nice and warm, so easy to swallow they forget there is poison in the broth. Religion truly is the opiate of the masses. He's a fucking despot. Like my husband said, he' s not talking about US policy, he's presenting his own credo. And so many are with him in that. We want to do something. My husband wants it to be something violent, but that's him. All I can think of is to put a sign in my yard. The religious overtones were way more than overtones last night, and the arrogance with which he drove 'em home was palpable.

scream.

Rock time. So, the kids wear skater shirts and download Beatle lyrics. I don't know what the eras have been for you. It all runs together for me. I loved Dave Barry's book Dave Barry turns 50. It visited many of the same stops and with a clarity I don't have access to. For some, like Barry, life has rings like a tree, clear and distinct. I am a tree without rings. Well, not to be so dramatic... I may have three: childhood, before, after. The childhood one is evenly distributed throughout. So little is clear. See??? Look ma! No rings.

I have a diamond ring. Inside, it says: My heart to K, always. In his, it says the same. Then, because he was so impressed by Gollum, he had engraved, "the precious." So it winds up looking like I am "the precious." I can see some future archaeologist digging up our bones as our dust mingles, and thinking how precious I was. I guess there are worse things. There really are.

Okay, well, that' s my weekend coming up. At 10:00 Asia and I will sip coffee that is too strong for me, but will give me the impetus to survive another Winco experience. I am a wife.

Plenipotentiary

Now there's a word for ya. Invested with full power. Kinda like the current administration. It is staggering, the power of religion when mixed with large sums of money. Lulls 'em right to sleep. Wynken, Blynken and fucking NOD.

I used to nod.

But seriously, I've been trying NOT to watch the GOB Convention. It makes me sick at my stomach-- the absence of critical thought. My coffee friend at deconstructionist has some pointed commentary that is worth a read.

I am not an environmentally protective person, and was comforted by her willingness to salt slugs, but I know I am in the wrong. I know there is a connection between the GOB and the rape of the world, but I am too self-interested to change my evil ways. I barely recycle, but/and I vote. I am defensive. I kill mice. Sue me.

I am asleep.

I've been away. Actually. Emotionally. It is too early in a marriage for a 45 day mother in law visit. We are fine. Wonderful. But I am not the hostess with the mostess. I love my life, but have the uncanny ability to think I am alone in it, or have some choice over my companions on this new part of the trail. I really don't. I never did. And the computer is in the living room and I have no time, no headspace for this really really necessary part of my world. If I don't write, I'm so cranky. So maybe if I get it out here, I'll calm down and get to what I really want to talk about which has so little bearing and everything to do with world events.

Its the little things. The devil is in the details. So is God. (So often in the same place at the same time, unlike Bush and Cheney.)

I was driving through Hillsboro yesterday on my way home from work, which, to digress, is kind of like driving through Weezer, Idaho on my way home from work (both geographically and ideologically) but anyway, there I was, and I saw a sign on a house:

Psychic Readings:

Love

Money

Weight

Depression

The top four American Concerns. What an unbelievable crock of shit. Freedom hangs in the balance and these are the big four.

I wished for a big black paintbrush to add "Republicans" to the list. I wanted TIME to walk in and ask what precisely she (an assumption, probably correct) proposed to psychically do about depression. I mean, you can trick some of the people some of the time, but you can't trick me. OH, WAIT! Better than half the country is asleep. Tricked.

I forget.

Well, back in my world, it is quiet. I have had three days alone with my person of preference (I defy the notion of choice, never had it) and the healing is good. MIL will be back Sunday but I am trying to focus on the hours between now and then rather than Sunday until the 13th.

rained out

...and just as I was complaining about predictable weather. We got rained out of our campsite last Saturday night. That's not entirely true. It rained. That is true. We stuck it out in the relative comfort of our canopied truck on a futon layered over a blow up mattress. Cozy. We were planning to leave Sunday anyway, but the storm was a near-surprise. I mean, the gathering clouds were a giveaway, but still, I'd been out there since early Thursday afternoon, out of touch with information technology. I wandered over to the camp host and asked if she knew what the weather would be like on Labor Day Weekend. She looked at me like I was crazy. "That's two weeks from now," she said. "Yeah," I countered, muttering "weather.com" under my breath as I walked away. There's just no pleasing me.

rodentia

It is no longer early. I was hoping to get some time alone, some quiet, all-to-myself time in this new life in a house of company and children and Kill Bill II, but the computer wouldn't come on. I won't go into detail about my sweetie's role in this tragedy, but trust me, its all his fault. By the time I got it to come up, an hour had passed and I had lost the thread, the inspiration, call it what you will, the fucking muse was pouting and giving up exactly nothing in the way of creative thought. Well fuck her. I'm writing anyway. I never believed in muses. She's the goddamned tooth fairy. Who needs her and her caprice anyway? I'm the writer, goddamn it. And I'll take ten minutes of your precious time to prove it. You can leave your quarters under my pillow.

Come back little Sheba.

I think the Hood to Coast Relay starts today. Run Asia and Annette, Run!!! Subsequent depression be damned. It evades me though -- the notion of depression settling in because you eventually must stop running. The thought of running, unless avidly pursued by someone more dangerous than my stepdaughters.... now that is depressing. But seriously, you go girls! I make light of what I cannot/will not/do not do.

We got a couple of new toys: a miniature cross bow and mouse glue pads. I hope their uses are never combined into some hideous anti-rodent sport hunting. If you've never seen mouse glue pads, they are unique and effective. A little mean-spirited, and those of you with a penchant for tenderness needn't read on, but they work where the usual trap does not. We've been through all manner of poison and humane traps, but the glue thing quite literally stops them in their tracks. I don't like the whining, peeping death part. I don't. But I also just threw away about five bucks worth of shelled walnuts and sliced almonds. Does that justify death? Well, I think it does. In the balance of geologic time, what's a few mice between friends? I don't think I'm making a dent in the mouse population or threatening the future of rodents as a species. I'm just cleaning up my corner, preserving the illusion of human superiority. They were probably here before me and will be here long after I'm gone. Like fleas on a dog, the earth will shake us off and only the rodents and cockroaches will remain, but damnit, I'm taking a few of the little bastards with me on my way out, and using the crossbow seems excessive at this point.

Ah. I've missed my blog.

I read The Case Against George W. Bush by Ron Reagan (Esquire), by visiting the ashabot. It was an erudite indictment, and I loved the distinction between liberals and rationalists. Any thinking person must, by now, acknowlege the fundamental dishonesty of the current administration. President Clinton, speaking on The Daily Show, said something like, "When people think, Democrats win." And I know liberals are not the only thinking people. I don't know that I'm a liberal, but I will align myself with rationalists. I think, therefore I'm pissed.

I was sitting on my porch yesterday and one of the tightrope walking squirrels joined me. Seems she has a nest in the camelia tree. She scurried through the rain with nuts and berries to store for the coming winter. Now, those of you who are actually paying attention to this rant will ask the obvious question: Did I use a squirrel glue pad to stop her? Did I break out the cross bow and pin her to the porch? I did not. But then, she wasn't so rude as to come in the house and steal nuts out of my basket. She settled for what was outside, on the ground. And she has a fuzzy tail.

I know I should use glass jars. I know. This is an old house.

the high priestess of springwater

Its my new title. We're gonna buy the town when we get enough money: a general store and a church. I thought he could be the preacher, but he's too busy being the devil right now, so I'm going to run the church and he can have the store.

We camped at Metzler this weekend and brought the bikes. It was a little last minute, and the girls came along plus one, but it was a good, long weekend. The only thing I mind about camping is what it does to my feet. You'd think I'd wear shoes. Jesus.

Can you believe that someone stole Munch's Scream? I had a mousepad with that print on it. The Krakatoa eruption in Indonesia is said to be responsible for the red sky. Well, tempera or not, I hope somebody finds it.

Camp Sites in the Greater Northwest

Today I drove to Estacada to check out sites for a possible camping trip this weekend. I've described what I want in earlier entries: cool and green. Big shade. I used to be against all human improvements, was a luddite, but with age comes laziness and sedentia (a precursor to dementia, I'm certain) and I'm all for picnic tables, fire pits and flush toilets. Showers.... not so much. I can dip in the river and feel clean enough to get by.

Then, after work, we had received some tips on possible camp sites out past Vernonia. I'd put in a link to Vernonia here, but I'm not sure what it would show. I think it might be a scene from Deliverance. So, being naturally inquisitive, we ventured out in search of Big Eddy Park on the Nehalem River. If you've ever been to Bolder City, Oregon, the only difference is that Big Eddy sits right on the banks of the Nehalem. And so do the campers. Campers may be too transient a term for the occupants of Big Eddy. They looked camped out in the most sincere sense of the word. Perma-camp. And it was one of those campgrounds with little underbrush to distinguish one site from another. It was just pretty much a cluster-fuck of broke down Winnebagos, sagging tents and the ever-popular blue tarp. This raises a question for me. Why blue? Why are all those goddamned tarps that godawful bright blue? Do they think it blends? Do they think you throw the shimmering blue tarp over, say, the woodpile or the children, and suddenly think the landscape has altered to include an unexpected fragment of low sky? I don't get it. I have some, but they bother me. I guess they could be made out of camouflage fabric, and I know some are, but I guess the risk there is that you'd cover, say, the children, and lose them.

Oh god.


Anyway, Big Eddy didn't get it, so we continue the search for the perfect campsite.

addendum/revision: Just made reservations for Labor Day weekend at Metzler Park. Big shade. Yay.

Awakenings

They can come slowly or all at once. They can be of the white light or educational variety. Light bulb moments--the kind that change the way I see the world, or the way I think the world sees me. And, at times like these, I feel like I've been away for a long, long time. As though I am coming to out of a dense fog and can see a thing more clearly than before.

It is good to be here, to be aware of who and how I am at this moment in time. To know that I am, right here and right now, where I belong.

I think.

monday monday

Not to worry. She's alright, my MIL. We're getting along just fine. There is nothing like a common enemy to galvanize a new relationship: the mean girls. Damn. Those kids are tough. Gotta love 'em, though. Its the only hope of redemption.

Only dead fish go with the flow

I thought it deserved title billing. I have nothing else to say about that.

What I want to talk about is weather. I liked it better when there was more mystery to the forecast. That is a recurrent theme here, not as prevalent as apathy, but a second to be sure: demystification as my own personal tragedy. I liked it when the weatherman wasn't so cocksure, didn't know, for instance, within a single degree of certainty, what would happen. I like getting caught in the rain, or being surprised by a too-hot day. I like weather that sneaks up on you. I guess I should live on the gulf coast of Florida, although they too have weather men sitting on their beaten shores, cameras poised for every breath of wind. I should be grateful, I guess, that we don't name our weather and have to consider gender and the pc-ness of hurricane women. I'm a hurricane and damned proud of it. Well, I used to be a contender.

Anyway, I liked having to pack for a day in the insincere, or maybe capricious, no... indecisive might be the perfect word... northwest. (As inappropriate as it is, I enjoy assigning human characteristics to non-human stuff. Reification? I think that's the word.) I liked having to carry a sweater because maybe, just maybe, a cloud might come by and relieve the monstrous heat. I liked layering, even though it made me look fatter. Now, weatherguys are obsolete. They could post the weather on the rolling marquee at the bottom of the TV screen and stop standing in front of a photorealistic map and saying stupid shit, like, "Well, the expected high is 120 but we might see 122. Tomorrow, Portland residents can look for some relief as a cooling trend will give us a high of 118." Nowadays, there's even a screen that tells you what the temperature will be at 6,10, 2, 8 and midnight. That's no fun. Where is the surprise of a sweetly cool Saturday morning, sitting outside for breakfast and getting caught in a sprinkle of summer rain if you know its coming. You can act surprised and like you wish you hadn't straightened your hair, but fuck it. You knew it was coming. Admit it.

Mommy

It doesn't help that over the phone she is telling her friends she'll stay until the first part of September. The first part, if I do the math, ends on September 15th. My mother in law is here, visiting, I thought, for a week. I'm certain she said a week. I would remember that, because I like her, but she makes me nervous. We are in an unnatural pause in our marriage, a hovering of sorts, as I learn how to be related to someone else.

I do not call her Mom.

My mother was devout. Had we lived in the Ozarks (is Meford in the Ozarks?) she would have been considered a zealot, a snake-handling faith-healer. Mom was a cheerleader, a rally girl from North Bend. She hated cats, heights and the coast. She took in strays and could dance the Charleston but couldn't change a light bulb for fear of electricity. I don't think she expected it to catch on quite like it has. She had faith in Jesus and the curative power of vinegar and raised five children on 200 dollars a month. Wild children. Bad children. She never expected my father to die, which he did, too too soon. And once he was gone, she didn't expect to live so long. She taught me how to pack and move. We lived in four houses on the same street. She wore her poverty like a ragged crown. Insisted on it. There were times she lived in a car and refused gifts--considered them evidence of worldliness -- the greatest sin.

This woman in my house, this new mother, is modern. I don't get it. There are no soft edges. No comfort. No lap for bouncing the grandkids. I doubt she knows all the nursery rhymes or the names of flowers. She has an IRA and a will that is on our coffee table. She is very organized. She rarely moves.

wildness

In the valley of the Applegate River, it was hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. They all seemed good to me. And when we were young, the wild ones, the Marlon Brando's of the back woods, lived big lives. They were the stuff of legend, even if only locally. But I wonder what it is about aging outlaws that is somehow pathetic. My question is this: Is a man still an outlaw if he has to remind you how notorious he is?

traveling light

There is alot to catch up on....the trip, the reunion, eagle vs. waldo lake, salt creek falls, camping, old outlaws, trout-fishing in america, packing vs. flying by the seat of your pants, and missing my son.

One at a time....

The pictures of eagle lake in northern california are deceptive. I'm a sucker for green: trees, grass, leaves, anything but food in the refrigerator that should not be that color, or, as Erma Bombeck said, "There is no known navy blue food." And as interesting as that is, I digress.

Eagle lake is not green. Well, actually, the water is. Approaching the lake from the desolation of the Klamath basin and the sweet town of Aida, the water is a shocking, malachite green. But the thing is, it is sitting in the middle of the desert, surrounded by, you guessed it: desert. Well, as much as I love to exaggerate [lie] I admit that there are pine trees, tall and sparse, doing their narrow best to provide shelter from the desert sun. Its funny to watch Californians thinking they are in the woods. And they are, I suppose. But coming from the deep wilds of oregon, the lush, almost tropical forests, I realize I am spoiled, blessed. We camped in hot red dust up to our ankles and my feet are awful. Awful. I have done all I can short of calling Dr. Sholl's in person and getting an appointment. I could blog about callouses, but that would be disgusting. I just want to go on record about Birkenstock sandals and cracking callouses. They cause the problem. There. 'Nuff said.

So we camped. We did not plan to camp, and I am learning this about my husband. I'm a planner. I need notice. I pack. I have stuff. He tosses three identical pairs of levis, three identical pairs of socks, a few t-shirts, and he's good to go. Me? Oh no. I strategize. And its all about weather and body image. What if its hot/cold/medium and I feel fat? What if it is hot/cold/medium and I feel like showing off my bod? I have to plan for these events, because its all about comfort, physical and psychological. So I need more stuff, and believe me, I have it. So he said, "Don't worry. We'll get a motel." Now, I knew we'd camp. So, I did, at minimum, have the presence of mind to back bedding, a futon (his idea), towels and soap, sandwich stuff, and my french press and coffee. And cherries. I love cherries. At least I had the coffee to bargain with as we begged camp to camp for food. Have good coffee will travel.

On the way down we visited my son, Marky, to those who love him. He has grown up since I left a mere 5 months ago. Left for the first time since they carved him out of my big belly. Well, we did get separated there for a month or so during the dark night of my soul, but that was involuntary, and probably for the best. I remember hitchhiking to find him, to retrieve him from his father, to snatch him from the jaws of the clan. They got him anyway, years later. But it was good to see him, to watch my beautiful, stumbling child learn to walk tall.

Waldo Lake. Now there is a lake. I insist on camping there before the summer is over. It is high in the Cascades and quiet, remote, clean, clear and cool. All the requirements of a perfect vacation spot. Nearby is Salt Creek Falls, a spectacular 86 foot drop to a deep green pool surrounded by concave, moss-covered basalt walls. I'm at a loss for words so I'll just use them all indiscriminately. Waterfalls do that to me. For some its the desert. Not me, boy. Give me your green, give me your wet, give me your narrow, your phobically high places, where leaning over the railing is a near death experience.

Outlaws

After I have coffee with asia from deconstructionist this morning, my sweetheart and I are on our way to his family reunion and a meeting of the outlaws. Now I suspect, as in my family, there are some inlaws as well. If they were all outlaws, nobody could get a reunion together. And I would be really surprised if my husband's Aunt Ida is an outlaw. Although, to hear him tell it, she was a Spanish dancer in her day, complete with castanettes.

In my family, we are the black sheep, with the exception maybe of my brother Kim (see earlier entry: eulogizing Kim Kinney) All drunks, writers, artists and heroin addicts to balance the militaristic, republican policemen who are my aunts, uncles and first cousins. My aunt Gertrude is said to be politically just a little to the right of Atilla the Hun. I did have an uncle who was insane and one who was a communist back in the McCarthy era, which was akin to insanity at that time, but the remainder are glaringly well-organized. They pay their bills on time. They do not go to jail or have to move in the middle of the night. I think it is unfair that some people get the book about how to do things, and we didn't. I think, to my unravelling, that many things are unfair: my hair, wages for nurse's aides, the inverse and possibly causal relationship between what you know and how you look.

Oh well, I'm going anyway. I love outlaws.

head cold

Upon peering out my bedroom window, what our new fence really looks like is a railroad car. It looks like Great Northern parallel parked at the edge of the yard. I'm dying to get a life-size stencil and paint "Santa Fe" or something on it.

For the past three days I have had a head cold. A bad one. It sounds so innocuous: a head cold, the common cold, a summer cold -- as though one could concievably go along with life, happily unaffected by the little bug. Well, it levelled me. I am still not myself. There is a respository for sludge in all the corners where my best thinking once lurked. It has always been a little difficult to get next to, but now I can't think for shit. I am better today, can, at minimum, type -- and want to make a pitch for orange flavored alkaseltzer plus. It is all I have to cling to.

I am such a baby. And we had to build a fence in the meantime.

The girls painted the basement. That was our quality time this weekend. I still maintain they hate me, and I can live with that. I'll admit I wasn't much help in my weakened condition, but they did fine without me. The basement is now red. Red red. With posters of the Ramones and a blow up of the Sticky Fingers album cover. I wonder if they know what an album is, or what an uproar that cover caused. I peeked. I confess. You might as well know it.

tin fence

We are finally fencing in the back yard we conscripted from our neighbor in the name of home improvement. We've started quite a trend. Neighbors three doors back and one across are busily improving their back yards. Taking down that hedge, that 30 foot laurel hedge, started something big. But I don't want to watch. I want my privacy back. I want to disappear into my little green space and putz around unobserved. And it's not that I think I'm fun to watch, I just feel exposed. I may still have the teensiest bit of residual paranoia. You decide. I didn't list my phone number until a few years ago. Ah well, the remnants of that other life.... So it was my idea to make a tin fence. Wood is so expensive. Jesus. A single red cedar board at Home Depot (I call it Home Despot) is $39.95. Shit. So a 40 foot run would be, well, alot. I was married to a logger once, so the relative value of boards is changed when you can make your own. But he died, which wasn't so bad, but is another really long story, and now we have to buy boards. So this guy tells us he has all this tin sitting around, and I'm thinking the nice old wavy kind of tin. No. It is more industrial than that, and painted barn red. Why? I had to know. Because it was part of a barn. The door. So, we will have a dismantled barn door for a fence. For awhile anyway. I don't care. I can decorate anything. I'll just call it shabby chic. At least we didn't buy the tin at an antique store for twice the original price like bobo's are prone to do.

There were brown recluse spiders between the sheets (of tin, not my bed sheets.) Those things are nasty.

happiness

I could have happiness as my blog theme, but I think I'll stick with apathy. I think I'm stuck with apathy. Happily apathetic. I like that.

He asked me if I need flowers or poetry. I said no, I need you to bring home that fifteen dollar orange metal dolly with fat tires, and a blue picture frame you dug out of the Hillsboro trash. I need to wake up next to you in the morning, lay down with you at night. That's all I need. I don't know how to seem as happy as I am.

Hemingway

I don't think I'm very interesting. I am deeply self-involved, but I don't think that should be of much interest to anyone else. I write shit down. It's what I do to keep from exploding, imploding.... talking. I am quiet. Insecure. Shallow. Sexual. I don't know whether it is the nature of a writer to dislike attention for the product of a too-fruitful imagination, or to both seek and reject attention. I don't care. I dislike writing about writing and here I am doing just that. I am happy, and this is having a reverse Hemingway-effect on my production of well-strung (unstrung) words.  Which is to say I can only create if I am miserable or drunk.

I have led too many lives.

asylums

It has been my custom to not write about what I do for money. The j.o.b.... But where I am now, this next asylum in my long list of asylums, is so transient, my position so temporary, that my feet barely touch the ground. And the people are so odd. SO ODD. And, for reasons of confidentiality (oh, please) I can't discuss particular features of the distressed humans I am shepherding these days. I mean, they don't have two heads or anything, but one has a gray face. Gray-blue, actually. Permafrost. Looks like an Everest alumni. I'd watch the Thorazine dosing if I were you. Shameful, what we have done in the name of mental hygeine. She hardly seems cleansed, but she is docile most of the time.

I have done my time in this field. Been here since I was a kid and emptied my first bedpan. I was an eighteen year old robber in need of honest work. I'd just held up Jack's drive up (sue me) and traded my ill gotten money for a jar of beans. Remember beans? When speed was speed.... Anyway, since I almost got caught for that, I figured legitimacy was my best defense. So, I dressed up as best I could and walked into Hillhaven, bowled over by the smell of urine and old skin. The lobby was lined with wheelchairs occupied by old women mostly. They seemed identical then: thin, longish gray hair pulled into severe pony tails, secured with thick red yarn. Like people of a different race, I could not pick out individual differences. Each little lap was covered with a crocheted blanket or quilt, bright awful colors, end pieces of yarn strung together haphazardly. I did not yet see the clear bags of urine hanging beneath many chairs. They seemed to be waiting for something, Bingo or Jesus, it was hard to tell. Gnarled hands reached out as I passed as though to touch me was to touch youth. Undeterred, I asked for an application. I don't remember filling one out, all I remember was a starchy German woman named Ingersol telling me to be back at one o'clock. She didn't care if I had a uniform, just a pair of white pants. I asked about experience-- did I need any? "Do you know how to take a temperature?" was all she wanted to know. I did. I came back at one.

My real training took place with two time-hardened aides who drug me around like the dead weight I was. I didn't want to be there, was just biding my time until something better came along, you know, like a ride out of town. But it didn't come. No one showed up to save me from my future. Toward the end of the first day those aides answered a call light and we entered a room. The man seemed suspended from the center of his hospital bed by all manner of trapeze-like straps, sitting semi-upright, with a leather helmet on his head. They went to work on him, cleaning him up, getting him ready for whatever was next in his abbreviated life. At one point they handed me a bedpan full of shit. In my wisdom, I said, "Oh, so I get the dirty work." They fell silent. The pause lasted a lifetime as my words clattered to the floor. Then the man spoke. "Honey," he said. "If there was any other way...." And my life changed in that moment. I saw him--a WWII pilot with the top of his skull blown off--and I have seen so much since then.

There is so much to tell. I wonder if I am ready, finally, thirty years later, to tell it.

blackberries

He doesn't want a cake for his birthday, which is today. He wants blackberry pie. Now, I could go to Safeway, or Freddie's to find them. (I'm sure they wouldn't have fresh berries at Winco. Ihatewinco.com-- there should be a site. I'll start it.) But no. He doesn't want store bought.... they gotta be fresh. So we went berry picking. Me and the mean girls. (I love those kids, they just don't love me. Yet. I'll get 'em....)

This is the part where I hate not knowing where I am. or rather, in this case, where the berries are. Down south, there is a sharp corner on Hwy 238 at Hamilton Road, and if you park in the triangle and walk down the gully, there are berries for days. But that's a 300 mile drive.

So my sweet husband, the birthday boy, gives me directions. I think I've said I don't take direction well. I also don't follow directions well. And the other part of that is: I can get anywhere if I have gas. So, it may take me a little longer, but I'll get there eventually. Oaks Bottom. That's where I was going. After a brief and fruitless tour of Multnomah -- no -- it starts with an M.... Milwaukee? No, that's not it. Anyway, its the road that goes to Milwaukee, and it is almost a freeway, but at long last I found it. Oak Bottoms. But as I left the relative safety of my truck, I gotta admit... there is no stranger sensation than trotting off into the uncharted urban wilds. Well, truth be told there are many, many stranger sensations, but this is not the time for all that. So, there we were, foraging for berries, a quarter-mile in, and we pass many forms of vegetation, but no berries, and I can hear the river, but can't see it from where we are. Finally, along comes a tall man carrying a tray of berries as though he were at a market. We had our empty milk jugs in hand (cut away to leave the handle--these are great for berry picking) and this gave us away as fellow fruit-gatherers. I freely admit confusion, so he says, "There is a place where the path goes under the railroad tracks and there is a trail off to the left." What I hear is, "Take the path under the railroad tracks and go to the left."

You can imagine what ensues. There are trails everyfuckingwhere....left right sideways, you name it. Of course, the berry patch is right where he said it was.

Now, the thing is, the girls know this, they had heard what he actually said, but they aren't comfortable enough to tell an adult what to do, so we traipse around for days, then finally, Haley says, "I wonder if that trail to the left of the underpass...." And I say, "Okay." Freely admitting I am so often so wrong.

We found the berries... buckets and buckets of them. And I will bake a pie and a cobbler. I have the best cobbler recipe which I am happy to share with y'all.

Jonni's Cobbler

melt 2 sticks of butter in a 9x13 pan

Batter -- mix together:
1 1/2 c flour
2 c sugar
1/4 tsp salt
4 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 c milk

pour into pan over melted butter

layer fruit over mixture (blackberries or peaches are best. It calls for another cup of sugar for the fruit but I leave that out. Maybe a little if the fruit isn't perfect, but then what are you doing with sub-standard fruit?) Bake at 350 until golden and crispy. (The batter bubbles up around the fruit to make the crust.) Serve warm with whipped cream.

too fuckin hot

I have considered documenting some of my own personal drama over a three day heat wave, but its like this: its only a heat wave if you don't have A/C. So yeah, I miss my air conditioner.  I have spent the past many years moving from one air-conditioned space to an other: home to truck to office and back. I've avoided heat. Now, I am attempting to embrace it. Sweat as part of life. I take diuretics to accomplish what the past three days have done for me, one drip at a time. Last night I sat in the basement on our newly acquired futon (there's one at every yard sale) and deliberately experienced the changes my body goes through when self-cooling. It is, like so much of my life these days, an adjustment. I used to spend the summer baking on a river bank, any river bank, but mostly the Applegate. Mostly McKee Bridge. And I remember endless days of 105 degrees, seeking shade, sleeping near a window or out in the back yard, and the heat was unavoidable. Until I started making money. Then, I could avoid weather. And I suppose that is an advantage. Ask any homeless person. Weather is a real equalizer. Ask an Alaskan. I'm going to digress now, I can feel it coming on, but hopefully I'll get back to my point, because, like Ellen, I do have one.

I went to Alaska a few years ago. Fairbanks. It was lawless and absent any apparent social heirarchy. I loved it. People wear pajamas to the store; houses, and most stuff, are purely utilitarian. Very little decoration (read: cheesy yard art) survives the elements with the notable exception of roadside altars. I wish I could find a link to show you, but I don't know what they are. They can be wooden planks, or telephone poles, covered with small stuffed animals nailed to them. I don't know that they are altars, I impose my own interpretation here. But you can imagine what these tiny sanctuaries look like after an Alaskan winter. The animals-- the kind you win at carnivals: cheesy, colorful, not the super soft yuppie variety -- what are they called? the ones with a tag in their ear...? Dakin? Something like that. Anyway, after a year of weather, the colors are muted at best and they hang there, ragged and rotting, like fuzzy little crucifixes all in a row.

What the fuck was I talking about? Oh yeah. Sweating. So I am feeling weather now, not just viewing it from my ivory window. I'm in it, body and soul. I sweat therefore I am.

back to the island

Sauvie's Island.

The first question was: why don't we come out here every day? We set up the shade thing and pretty soon I didn't care if all the fat women and screaming children in the world were upon us, blanket to blanket. All that mattered was the water, the mighty Columbia, my wading pool, and I am weightless, swivelling like an otter, the sandy bottom much nicer than lake muck. I'm a river girl.

 

Cowgirls and Indians

Having coffee this morning on Hawthorne, an indian (native) woman passed our table and asked how long it took my companion to grow her hair. "I've only cut it once in my life," she said. The woman took her hat off to reveal a really bad haircut. Really bad. And this is on Hawthorne where most things pass for good. It wasn't the answer she wanted to hear. Actually, the answer didn't matter. Nor did the conversation. I'm a shit to people who interrupt -- mentally ill or not. Indian or not. Spiritual giants or not. You could interrupt me and I'd treat you like shit. At any rate, she blathered on about losing a family member, cutting her hair off in one griefstricken hunk (a long braid, apparently) and burying it. She went on, at some length, telling us why indians do that shit. And I don't care. (theme of  blog.) They can cut off their arms and legs in honor of their ancestors for all I care. I was just having coffee. I didn't want to know. And the thing is, she didn't want me to know that. She just wanted some of my money. The psycho-tragic hair saga was simply the dog and pony show she was willing to do to get my money.

I was going to say that I can't stand rituals, but it isn't true. Some I find comforting, like the first day of school and new pencils. And easter eggs. I just don't think its okay to take out your religion and pander it on a streetcorner for pocket change.

Yes I do. I've changed my mind. I think that's fine. I should have been nicer. If I see her again, I'll give her something. 

I might.  

new things

I love my new bike. I got a horn with it. It's a squeeze bulb with three spouts or horns or I dont' really know what they're called. The metal parts beyond the rubber bulb.  
 
I also got a new dress.  It was cheap and that makes it even better. It probably won't hold up in a washer, but it will be fun to dance in one time. I used to have a beaded antique top that looked really good on me and I danced all the beads off. I remember dancing in it to the Beatles "Back in the USSR" in a bar in Coosbay with a stainless steel dance floor. Shiny. Me and the floor. I love to dance.

workaday

Back in the saddle again.

mama

I was listening to a woman discussing her dying father, that he was cold and emotionally distant. Her pain was real. I know that at the end of my mother's life, and it was a long long twenty-year ride to the end, that I couldn't see her for who she was, or accept her, until about a month before she died. What I know about dying is alot. I've seen many many families through the transition, and the only advice I've ever given (apart from the spewing of youth) is that there is no right way or wrong way. No proper behavior for the dying or the grieving. Dying seems hard. I'd like to say, given my experiences with the dying, that dying is hard, but I don't know that. I've seen two buddhist's die lingering deaths. One selfishly, one beautifully. (These are my judgements. I'm not a buddhist. I judge like a bandit....)  I've seen medical murders. I've seen husbands follow their wives in one day. I've been with a sweet little old lady as she sat on her bedside, waiting. I'd asked her what she was waiting for, and she had said, "Just biding my time." Until what? I had to know. The young are always in such a hurry to know. Its overrated.  "Until Jesus comes for me." she said. I smiled knowingly, nodded, left, and came back in an hour to find her dead. I've seen pain and joy in the same room holding hands, comforting each other. That I was not able to comfort my own mother, knowing all that I know, is something that I carry with me now. Its a little heavy, but okay. I was mad because she didn't take care of herself. I saw her illness as a product of intention. And anybody could argue that it was and be right. You can be right if you want. But what I know now is that she was afraid of doctors, and she couldn't, not wouldn't, find out what was wrong with her. And I protected myself with distance and called it hers.
 
My mother could dance the Charleston. There are times I wish I could ask her the names of obscure flowers (I still think she'd make up the name if she didn't know it), or fabric, or how to make our homemade, sugary fudge, and she is always gone.  The things that irritated me are so endearing now. It's funny what you remember.

day trippers

I've been fortunate to always land in Seattle on sunny days. I hear they are rare. As we pulled into town --no, Seattle is definitely not a town-- as we pulled into the clusterfuck of a city, we passed three accidents, one right after the other, people stopped in the middle of the freeway to change a tire. On the way up I had wondered at roadsigns saying, "if you have a fender bender, pull over to the side of the freeway." Well, yeah. Good tip. Then, upon arrival, it is clear that Washingtonians need direction.
 
We went to the Rock & Roll Museum. It's called something else. And the Science Fiction museum. It was expensive. I liked seeing Janis' magenta feather boa. That was my thrill. And, I guess seeing Hendrix's hand written lyrics was inspiring. And sad. "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" (W Blake), or, in somebody else's words: whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.  Now, I really believe that is true. Its just that so often it kills ya.
 
I have no regrets.
 
There was a section on the Kingsmen (Louie Louie). One of them lived down the street from me when I lived in Portland years ago just after my father died and my mother fell apart. In that order. I was riding my bike (4th grade) and he was washing his car. Probably a corvette. He squirted me with the hose, I rode over a nail and popped my tire. That's my rock and roll hall of fame.
 
Let's see. We went on a ferry ride to Vashon Island, drove around the island to Tahlequah Bay and on another ferry to Point Defiance. I thought it was Cape Disappointment, but that's at the mouth of the Columbia. You wonder how they got the name. I do, anyway. I guess I could go to: howcapesgettheirnames.com. There's everything else.com
 
Plan for the next run is to go to the glass museum, then take the ferry to Port Townsend and drive down.
 
I got my bike! It is so fun to ride. I'd like to take a bike tour of the San Juan Islands, but I don't know if it is a burly deal. I'm not burly at all. I appreciate people who exert themselves, but I am not one. Riding up Division is a burly as I get. Mt. Tabor would kill me.
 
Well, it's a lazy sunday. The children, his children, are here, still asleep, complaining that we are too loud in the morning. Well too bad. I've tiptoed around one teenager and it didn't do him any good at all. Did harm, in fact. They hate me. It doesn't matter what I do. A wise woman told me this, in relation to step children: The only thing you can do about step children is love your husband.
 
I do I do I do.
 
 
 
 

tattoo early

I worked, therefore I was.

It was familiar to be in a healthcare facility. Even the designation of the setting takes work. I don't know that we care for health, but some seem to care. I wish I could just work at the coffee shop down the street, get some tattoos, live on less. That art can't come cheap, though. The thing about tattoos, for me, is the inability to change my mind, which I've never been able to prevent from changing. The things I thought I would always love when I was eighteen--acid-rainbows dripping through Peter Max-like clouds and stars-- would horrify me today had I strung them rib to rib like a permanent corset. Not to mention the probability of pregnancy and all of its attendant disfiguring. I love tribal art. What I really love are the celtic looking knots and armbands. But I've worked in nursing homes long enough to know that the crescent moon on the breast of youth is the banana hanging from the coathooks of old age. So there you have it. Nothing is static. Not belief. Not skin. And now that I'm on the topic of nursing home bodies, I wonder at the patients of the very near future: ninety-five year old women with perfect tits, tight thighs and flat bellies. There is just something disturbingly incongrous about it. In the final analysis, and fight it though I have and do, there is a certain symmetry to sag. "The organism will out," my physician used to tell me. "Gravity will out" is more like it. Gravity, like entropy, always wins.

I love entropy, atrophy, anomie. All forms of breakdown, from muscular to social to the resultant alienation and social instability. Its all good.

I gotta go.

yard art, strange monkeys

See old post: "monkey on the porch." I posted it some time in February of 04. We still don't know who left that thing.

I have to go back to work today. I don't know what to wear. White, I'm thinking. Virginal. Create the impression of guilessness (is that a word?) and bring out the black later. No time for turtlenecks.

Speaking of necks, mine looks like its been wrung. Bruises spreading like gossip across my lily white skin. Arnica arnica, work your magic.

all day in the house

I go back to work tomorrow. Actual work. I have settled nicely into this sweet slow life, this wife-thing, this marriage. I make our bed every day. I wash dishes joyfully, knowing beyond any doubt this is where I want to be. I have loved my personal investigation of feminism, and I do not reject the precepts. I simply embrace the domestic. I find it valuable, moreso than the pedantic pursuit of knowlege. Sorry, but I do. I've learned enough. (there I go again...) I remember writing a line in a novel that will likely never be published: "She straigtened slowly from the perpetual bent-ness of domesticity." (Jesus. With opaque shit like that, no wonder it will never see the light of day.) But really, I gather more hope from making the bed than a thousand heavily considered rejections of whose job it ought to be. The single greatest advantage of education is finally acquiring the ability to do what needs to be done whether or not I want to do it. Including making the bed. If I begin the day by making the bed, I have some hope of order for the remainder of the day. It is not that I can no longer embrace chaos -- be sure that I can -- I'm just not as entertained by it as I once was. I used to be known for the condition of my home. People who knew me talked about the science projects in my refrigerator. When asked, I didn't know where I kept the towels. I didn't do the dishes. I hired my eleven year old neice, who finally refused because she was afraid to reach into the sink. My husband, who was only an infrequent night time visitor back then, showed up one night and said, "That shit was on the floor last time I was here six months ago." I said, "Well then, you should probably pick it up." So he knows how it could be with me.

Well. I don't know what that was all about.

I've set up comments below. See if it works.

the line

I hate being a drug addict. It is inconvenient as hell. Most people, in most parts of the world, just take medicine for pain, or not, as the case may be. Not me. I have to weigh, consider, examine my body like a running CT scanner, ever vigilant for the slightest nuance of discomfort. And there is a difference between pain and discomfort that I have to be so very aware of. To thine own self be true. Yes. Great idea. The problem seems to arise NOT when I am consuming the drug, per doctor's orders. It's all good then. I have real pain PLUS something to look forward to. But when it is over -- the legitimate need for pain medication -- that's when the chatter begins in earnest. "Aw, c'mon. It hurts, you know it and I know it." It is at that point, when the voice in my head, (the mean one I'd hoped I'd gotten rid of in this past surgery) begins to refer to me as "we" I know I'm in deep weeds. I am alone in the room. Of this much I am certain. But suddenly, the voice dictates: "we" need medication. (I appreciate Bob Earl for his insight into this particular aspect of the addictive mind.) So, anyway, as of this morning, my medication extravaganza is over, and now I think I need a party thrown in my honor for not over-doing it. I want a medal. I want presents. I want about a bucket of vicodin to last me. But it wouldn't, would it? That's the sad truth. The sad truth is that the 15 minutes that are loveable about narcotics, those sweet, fleeting moments that crawl up your spine like an expert lover, bleed into hours of sedation. I used to be Willing to trade it all for those moments, and live a sedated life. And the thing is, wouldn't you think it was cause for celebration to be free of pain? Don't most people look forward to that? Isn't that what healing is all about? Twisted.

walking on hawthorne

We pass the kid on the street, a can for money sits to his left: "ninjas killed my family, need kung fu lessons. anything helps." I look him in the eye, not certain what exactly I am looking for, willing to share in what I think is a pretty good joke, but he's not laughing.

Safeway

Two for one sale. Eggs. Two dozen for the price of one. Only the one dozen price is three bucks. I don't care. (this is my theme, my mantra, my thread) By the time I hit Safeway, I've abandoned any hope of thrift. My husband shops at Winco. This is hard for me. I'll admit to being white trash in some ways, but I really like Freddy's better. Winco is just too much. The aisles too long, the meat department more like a slaughter house than I like to face. Miles of food. Bad veggies, unripe fruit, small avocados. No good sourdough bread. But it's cheap cheap cheap, isn't it? And bagging my own groceries.... I hate that part. Such pressure, and my obsessive need for order makes it nearly impossible to get through the chore. How many cans in one bag? How important is balance anyway. Paper or plastic? This becomes my own personal dilemma. I prefer paper, but only, I think, because of poverty. The remnants of childhood. We used to need them for garbage sacks, neatly folded over at the top, twice if you were good at it. And draining the grease from chocolate chip cookies -- we removed them from cookie sheets into neat little rows on brown paper sacks to cool. Now, there is little use for them save recycling. And its funny, the money spent on just the right paper towels to drain the cookies.... evidence of affluence. When we did not waste, we did not consider wasting. Recycling itself is a product of affluence.

This is serious

Oh my.... I had no idea blogging was so serious. The article in the Willamette Week brought to my attention the following: A. My blog is shit; B. I should edit more carefully (read: at all) in the event someone actually reads this shit; and C. In order to compete in blog world, one needs a topic, or at minimum, a thread. I don't have one. I just needed a place to take notes on my pathetic life, and this seemed as good as any. To my extremely limited readership, I offer a half-hearted apology. I'll try to do better. I'll capitalize. I'll let up on the elipses.... honest I will.... I'll consider the possibility that commas are a problem for me. Grammar seems, and has always seemed, so terribly personal. So subjective. I know where I want you to breathe, to pause, to stop, to go. Trust me on this. And, as is so often the case with me, I don't care. I just don't. Not today.

I'm not well. They stitched my face back together. My one and only face. I feel like a terrible cartoon of myself, prednisone conspiring with other agents of change to create a big, blonde chipmunk. Which would be fine, or at least tolerable, if I lived alone. But I don't. I don't suffer well. Not publically. I'm a heroin addict for Chrissake. I am a big fucking baby. I stub my toe, I shoot smack. Are we clear? So... Having a witness to my whining and bitching really puts a crimp in my style. He is so good, my husband, my sweet sweet man.... and I am usually very nice to him. Really. But not these days. I look like shit and that makes me mad. And when I'm mad, I'm evil. Ask anyone.

So, there's my blog for the day. No topic save my all time favorite: me. I welcome suggestions, but only for entertainment value. I don't take direction well at all.

I keep getting these little blurbs in the corner of my screen by way of Qwest: Americans hang Afghan detainees by feet... Ridge says new terror warning will fuck up election.... I suppose I could comment on these topics, and be newsworthy, but shit. What is there to say? Better by the feet than the neck? Stop doing that? Tom Ridge is probably just paving the way for yet another republican coup??? Really, I think I'll leave all of that for the more politically savvy to comment on. Don't get me started. Remember, I'm the one who doesn't care if the world is flat or round.

Grouchy

There is not enough Vicodin.

Minutae

Apprentice Cats

These cats around here think my newly planted lawn (yes, more lawn) is their own personal catbox. We have a old old cat. Sebastian, 13+ years and still the godfather of the neighborhood, although my man thinks he's becoming suicidal in his old age, says he crosses the street without looking, and that he never used to cross the street at all. His ears are notched, skin riddled with scars beneath a thick coat of wiry black fur. He was rescued, therefore loyal, with the notable exception of a two year hiatus while Click, the maddog, lived here. Shows pretty good judgment in my estimation. So, the plan is to cover the grass... tarp it so they'll have nowhere to dig. Besides, it's July, a stupid time to plant grass. But hell, up here, I can't tell what season it is. It's cool today, but I'm learning that the strong summer sun is hanging out right behind the clouds, ever available to fry shit when you're not looking. There are two kittens who live next door, and innumerable feral cats. The babies follow Sebastian on his rounds, learning as they go. The neighbors call Sebastian "Blackie." Clever. They feed him, have a cat door... took him in during the dog days, and now claim he IS Blackie, has always been Blackie, that they paid for him and he was never ours. I don't care (see?). And the beauty of it is, Sebastian has no idea he is involved in a property dispute. He just eats when and where he likes and sleeps inside if he wants to. The apprentice cats are theirs, and they are welcome to 'em.

Post-op

I lived. I am on drugs. There were complications, and it's all good, now. I'm home and happy to be here. I look like Jabba the Hut. Don't visit me. The thing he took out of my neck, turns out, was my evil twin -- embryonic tissue that never made the cut (until yesterday, of course.) I'm hoping against hope that we've finally removed that mean voice, the one who has the goods on me and uses them at the most inopportune times imaginable. Time, as ever, will tell.

Bikes

Nothing is ever really all that simple. Or, as JoAnne's screensaver says: "For every complex question there is a simple answer that is usually wrong." Something like that.

We have the bikes. Or, one of them, anyway. Atually getting them has been interesting. Mine is horribly flawed, but beautiful. He's ordering a replacement now. K got his, but it isn't working right either, so we're a little disillusioned, and may have paid medium money for a step up from a Huffy. No. I think they're better than that.

Blues Festival and Fireworks

Sitting on the sidehill, listening to band after band. Anything seems to pass for blues. Reagge blues, country blues, blue grass, rock blues, speed-metal blues and the occasional sweet down beat, that grinding, intensely sexual sound, something like the opening riff of "The Thrill is Gone." Chicago blues, Missippi blues, Delta Blues. Its personal, and what is the blues to me, may not be what is the blues for somebody else. So I wait and I wait for my blues. My turn to dance.

And, I would have said, prior to this week, that fireworks are fireworks. Not so. They are similar, but the intensity of Portland's fireworks over the Willamette, was, well, intense. Breathtaking, actually, for me. Ever the small town girl, I stood stupified as blast after blast cracked the sky and made it bleed.


Old Timers

I've found some of them. Some who have abandoned one program for the one where the grown-ups go. That's still what I'm after -- being a grown-up -- one distant day.

One Missing Flamingo

On the fourth of July, one of my prize, cheesy yard art items went missing. Finally. I suspect it met a bitter end, stuffed up the ass with firecrackers, pink plastic projectiles raining down Clinton Street.

A lone flamingo now guards the hydrangea out front, awaiting the next drunk night, awaiting release.

Fleetwood Mac

Went to the concert Monday night. I've always loved Fleetwood Mac. Always. And unlike many old bands, the music was so good. I remember watching the Moody Blues last summer at Britt and they were still wearing leather pants and trying to do synchronized high kicks with their guitars in unison. I was afraid they'd require paramedics. But this night, this music, was so familiar, so well-travelled. My favorite song, the Derelict, never gets played, but that's okay. I was watching history. My history. For the uninitiated, I think Mick Fleetwood has Tourette's and its treatable. If you were there... what the fuck was he saying???? For us, it was the speaking-in-tongues segment. But it was watching the woman that gave me pause. Stevie Nicks. I know when I was young I wanted to be her, was both compelled and terrified by her beauty, the rumors that she danced with the devil to get where she was. But as she sang that line: "...and I'm getting older too." The issue of mortality, mine and hers, a day before my surgery, arose. And she still had it. Not all of it, but enough.

So, that's the update. My slit throat hurts.

Social Heroin

I'm going under the knife again. I have all the information, which, if you've been paying any attention at all, I don't like to pack around in this busy busy mind. Trivia. Just hook me up to a hose pulsing full of demerol and tell me no lies. The outcome will be what it will be. Forewarned, in my experience, changes nothing. I must have this procedure, and knowing I could be permanently disfigured, but probably not, is cold comfort. Statistically, I'm almost certainly going to be fine. But, I'll be glad when this one is over, when the drugs I love have once again passed, however briefly, through my body, and I am left twitching in their wake, trying to remember what the fucking problem was in the first place, asking Why can't I have just the teensiest bit of social heroin? Just once, twice, three times a day??? Is that too much to ask? Vicodin is no close second, but as the time gets near, I consider it. Consider the remote possibility that medical need could take me by the hand and lead me back down that old road. I still don't think I'd make it as a crack whore on MLK. I just really don't. I don't have what it takes anymore. Now I am not naive. I know a good habit would inspire me to abandon the lifestyle I have come to know, but I just can't picture it. Which is good. Who would water my flowers? Where would I keep all my hand washable linen pants? Back in the day, I could never get the grass and the garden to grow at the same time. I didn't have towels or socks.

I'm just being dramatic. I'll be fine.

Long life

She spoke again this morning: "Life is.... long." She is younger than I thought, miles of bad road in her eyes, on her skin. I tell her to stay out of the sun, like I haven't. Self preservation. Life is long. And so very short. A blip on the screen. I am who I am in this aging body. I am who I've always been. Betrayed by skin and gravity. Complicit in the eventual, the unavoidable, the ultimate grounding.

It is a beautiful day, cloudy, as I await the arrival of my new bicycle. We have been married 2 months today. We have 60 days.

Turmoil has subsided in my busy mind as I lean once again toward acceptance of my own process, my transition into an altered life. It is not what it used to be, and sometimes I think the pain comes from my attempts to restore equilibrium. What I forget is that equilibrium was killing me. I was suffocating in stasis. Treading shallow water. Now I may be in deep weeds, but they are my weeds, I recognize them now.

Home is home. Life, if long, is good. My son, unlike others I know, (like my nephew Mike and Asha's boy, John) is not heading off to Iraq to fight an unjust war. I watched the movie Cold Mountain, which was okay. My favorite line went something like this: "I'll bet God's sick of coming down on both sides of an argument." I don't know what God thinks, but that seemed possible. Of course, the notion that this is a religious war seems absurd. Its always reducible to economics.