Friday, June 19, 2015

Reprinted from a facebook entry:

         Thinking today how the currency of friendship is, always, ultimately, time – hard time, sometimes of course, but also the times of your lives.  Of course there are gifts people can give you that are crucial (an elegant coat, a fabulous pair of shoes, an airline ticket, or just plain old cash, given the circumstances:  a need for warmth, or something that makes you feel sparkly new, the means for adventure or a trip home, or just plain paying the bills on time) – but the real hard currency are the minutes, hours, days, weeks – the lifetime you spend shoulder to shoulder with the people you love the most, sharing the burden of inevitable pain, exulting during the good times, eating countless home-cooked meals together, getting together for impromptu Saturday night parties, and of course, always, no matter what, looking for the humor in everything, even (especially!) when it's gallows. 
         It is the ultimate honor to allowed to be a part of another person’s journey, to be among the first to hear news, be it good or bad, to be the first responder.  Because nothing takes the place of the shared here and now, and nothing is ever as consoling as hearing the voice of someone you really love saying, What do you need?  Or just cutting to the chase with:  I’ll be right over.
         It’s what separates the hardcore from the flirts, the always-texts/never-sees from real here-and now-face time, superficial words from the real, deep consolation of a major hug, and a face to witness the event so you don't have to do it all by yourself. 

         Here’s to my friends – my real friends – this is me, raising a glass, to you.
An American Beauty  (hint:  use no mirrors)      


     When I feel beautiful, I feel beautiful from the inside out.  I am aware of my hair, thick and blonde, framing my face.  I am aware of the zygomatic arch curving under my eyes, and I look out, letting my soul fill my gaze, try to simply see myself as all soul, eyelash and hair, w/ wit to spare!  
    But should I look in the mirror,  I am almost always aghast at how different I look from how I feel (who has not, after all, glanced in a store window only to be confronted by some alien reflection, bloated cheeks and furrowed brow, hair flying everywhere,  wind making your eyes run – so NOT how you perceive yourself, walking down the street) – and the question remains, it haunts:  who am I, really?  The person I feel issuing from behind my eyes, or that older woman in the glass’ reflection, aging so much faster than my mind?

- Dec 7, Oakland, CA, 2013

From books I've recently read

From Books I’ve (Recently) Read:
By Elizabeth Scarboro, My Foreign Cities:

Re first time she hung out with her (HS) friend, Stephen (who eventually became her husband):
They’re cutting class & sitting at a diner, eating & sharing parts of the paper, and she writes:
      ‘...and there was something going on here, this feeling I couldn’t explain.  It was something about stepping out of the noisy halls and into this quiet, above-ground place, looking down at the world from the second story, the way I could see the mountains as well as the brick walkway, the line of the western slope through the snow.  It was something about being out of time, but it was a little different than that, more that time had slowed down, or we’d slowed it down somehow.  We’d switched movies or soundtracks, or we were deep inside a single track, the way you could sink into a song, lose awareness of its 3-minute life span, live within it for what felt like a while.  There was something about this particular 10:15 on a Tuesday, we’d crawled inside it, we’d willed it to open up a little, we were stretching it out, the minutes were slowed and they were ours, and we were sitting here in them, like it was what they were meant for, and it was something about the two of us together that was making it happen, or maybe it was  just Stephen, maybe this was what minutes felt like to him all the time.
         ‘How the length of Stephen’s time here on earth influenced our sense of months, and years, and minutes, and days.  I don’t know how to describe it except to say we were deep in time, and also aware of its passing.  Maybe it’s most similar to being in love long-distance, when you finally get to see the person, and you know you only have a week together, and so you live deep inside that week, refusing to look out its windows, and your refusal is an acknowledgment that the windows exist.’



From Joanna Herson’s  The Outside of August:

Re:  giving handjobs in high school:
‘He said he’d call her but she didn’t really care.  Once she had done something like that, once she surprised herself and someone else, the rest felt forced and steeped in obligation, and she didn’t trust obligation any more than she trusted good old neglect.’

Re:  post-fight w/ her mother, riding the train home together:
‘They each read their books and by the time they reached home they were both worn out from keeping quiet.  They had that in common.  While Gus and her father could keep quiet for days with an ease that seemed almost sinister, Alice and her mother couldn’t do it.  Neither had the will or the stamina.’

Re: cruel chicks:

‘The secret world of mean girls – it must be universal.  It must be programmed in the genes – an intimidation technique that never failed.  Alice often felt that if she could just tap into this secret world of indisputable female command, everything would be so much simpler and clearer.  Kindness never meant as much when such power was close by; this feminine sway with a touch of cruelty was more elusive and voluptuous and more utterly distracting than a perfect pair of breasts.’




From Kathy Ebel’s  Claudia Silver to the Rescue:
(Here, about 90s NY women at a concert:)
     ‘A posse of gorgeous young women with big gold hoops and  kohl-rimmed eyes threw daggers at Claudia (the white chick).  They’d probably been Tri-Delts at Spelman, but were lately emboldened by their kente-cloth head wraps, motorcycle jackets and the sustained, empowered rush that comes from getting one’s law school applications in early.
     ‘…She returned to the bar and took her place among the three other anonymous white girls, assuming a casual pose with good posture that would telegraph a kind of bad-ass dignity, as opposed to loneliness.’

Here, picturing her love object Ruben choosing between ‘Anonymous White Girl Number Two or Kente-Cloth Bitch-Rag, Esq')
About Ruben:
     ‘Ruben’s fierce masculinity consumed the little apartment.  His leather clothes creaked with cold, his guitar scraped the walls of the narrow hallway, a fresh, warm cloud of vetiver rose from his body.’
And:

      ‘Claudia and Ruben left the apartment together that morning, strode to the subway stairs, and galloped their descent to the platform.  With each step, Ruben expertly distanced himself from her, so that while they began the brief journey to the train as lovers, they became acquaintances at the stairwell, and were complete strangers by the time they were smashed together on the rush-hour train.  Ruben’s hand grazed Claudia’s body with the indifference of a commuter.’

To Vacate

From Unsent Letter to My Friend, J, whom I went to visit two summers ago (or was it one?  Who can keep track!):

         What was that phrase that jumped into my head during those ten days: 
          For strange country, look within.  
          On the idea of vacation.  It comes, obviously, from the verb  'to vacate' (a word, btw,  that began with the French Aristocrats 'vacating' the city for their country villas). 
         Somehow I seemed to vacate myself while I was in WA.       
         Still, back home, in Oakland, I find myself in the midst of this monumental, long-distance stressing, self-doubt marathon, technology-losing, typing so much and so hard (I was raised on manuals, OKAY?  And NO, I am not that old -- it was just what we had at home!) that I've turned some of the fingerpads to blank pads (all except for X, J & Q).    I mean X and Q, okay.  But J?  Little old humble j??
         (Digression; comes w/ the smoking of the pot-pot).
         Makes me think of something else CL says to me, ‘do you ever write with nothing on board?’  His RN terminology does soothe me.  In that yes, it’s medical, and YES, I am sick in the head!  Just ask Judd Apatow!
Can everyone please love me anyway?
      (Of course I know the answer to that.  To the exact extent that you can do that for somebody else, will somebody else(s) be able to do it for you).
         Love begets love.  And nobody says about love, FUCK, no!  Who the hell wants that?  And nobody refutes the old hippie songs (‘all you need is love/’).
         Nobody.  Not even the goddamn Republicans.  (Since they already  have 99% of the money, of COURSE all they need is love!)
         And yet, I am not brave, or smart, or evolved, or awakened, or tough, or cool, or detached enough not to feel pushed back, and not gently, when the people around me start talking about their complete lack of interest in thought.  Further, that thought ‘sucks – is just about immoral, to say nothing of DEEPLY BORING, and the stupidest thing a person can do on their road to enlightenment.’
         Since thought is what I do, and then write down, and what I do best, and the best way I know how to hit the truth (combined w/ God knows what other variables -- & by God, I mean The Goddess).  Isn’t it weird how it’s God but then it’s ‘The’ Goddess?
Hmmm….
         Another random thought (that I  imagine might take/lead/drop me somewhere I’ve never been before):
it’s all about the element of surprise.

(‘Soldiers, parachuting in in full makeup!  Now THAT would surprise the other troops!’  Eddie Izzard, looking simply fucking fabulous, and NOT in a gay way, either)…
- June 19th, 2015/first written in July 2013

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

On the wearing of undergarments, and other life stuff


So a friend of mine dropped by last night, and she & I and my best friend, Kathryn* -
(*who, incidentally has ‘rented’ her family’s backyard cottage to me for the last couple few years -- and by airquotes I mean for not much, though I try to mitigate that by helping w animals, garden, K.P., silly late night conversations and our mutual absorption in shows like Transparent, Orange is the New Black, and Married) -
- found the three of us hanging out in the garden, all the pretty lights on, organic chicken steaks on the gas firepit barbecue in the back, and someone says something about not wearing any underwear.
         And perhaps it's relevant to mention that we are all in our fourth or fifth decades of life and I’m thinking surely as we age we will be more, not less, ‘proper’? 
         So.  This is how it happened to me:
         My boy, the only other one I considered marrying* (after he asked) post my one and only other husband (we were together at least 11 years  and I would consider him one of my best friends even though we cannot be in touch anymore, as he is v busy w/ his beautiful second wife and three gorgeous kids. all of whom live in L.A...)
     But this *guy (John S.),  that was (but can’t I say is, here?  Because surely even though he died -- no, he did not PASS AWAY, he fucking DIED) – even though he’s gone gone motherfucking GONE (and rarely, so rarely!  visits – by which I mean dropping in on my dreams – the only time I do remember one of those dreams, he wanted sex – which made me smile because that WOULD be the reason he’d drop in – smirking pun intended…oh, my boy…
         I say that because he was – nine?  Yes, I think nine years younger than me when he died.
         At 32.
       
         (But enough backstory, back to the theme!):
         At some point (this is about a decade later, give or take) I have told both of these fine women (and they are fine, you’re just gonna have to take my word for it) that one of the first things I found gratuitous after my guy died was the putting on of underwear.  Of under-garments.  Of drawers.
         The one thing I had – had, had, had – to do each morning was get to the goddamn clinic before it closed, which meant taking the bus, which meant getting out of bed --
(even now, ten years later, I still have a lot of trouble getting out of bed -- wait, I have ALWAYS had a hard time getting out of bed*!) 
    -- dragging some clothes plus shoes on so I could run to the bus, & one time, all my own clothes dirty, I grabbed a pair of his cords and yanked them on (he was pretty thin) plus a sweatshirt over my head and as I ran to the door the pants fell to my ankles.
         Wow, I thought dully, I’m skinny. 
         And all that ended up meaning to me – to me!  Who agonized over those HIDEOUS TEN POUNDS in high school -- and now people have e-mailed me pix from then and I was in fact NOT FAT!  Chipmunk-cheeked, God yes, but fat??  Not really!  
        ['That’s the problem,' my friend Flo commiserated with me when I told her, 'We still have fat heads']
       – all that weight loss (at least 20 lbs) ended up meaning to me was that I needed a fucking BELT.  C'est tout!
       However:  I do not wish to stray from my point (even though I have, greatly, and more than once already, I know, I know!)
         WHATEVER.  My point is that underwear was the last thing I had time for.  I yanked on a pair of unlaundered jeans, I kept the shirt, I brushed my teeth, I scrounged for change, and then I went and waited for the goddamn bus, which was more than once so late I missed my so!  Necessary!  Appt at the clinic.
          I have gone commando ever since. 

         And here’s the thing:  I told both of my friends about this only to find out that one of them (advised by her mother – a working RN then -- when she was little not to wear her ‘draws’ at night because 'parts need some airing out') has also been going commando for – apparently, but don’t quote me on this – decades since, and the other one has been going commando ever since I told her that story!!
         Well.
         I just want to say it was one of my proudest moments.
         And if you don’t get that, all I can say is –
         you ain’t one a my tribe!
*(re which:  all my best work is done in bed)