Sail (Photo)

What is a two hour sailing cruise with no wind? Actually, contemplative, and a restful, beautiful evening.

Math

There is this TV show called Numb3rs, featuring a mathematician who is smart, sexy (stop laughing), and consults for the FBI. I so get this. I had a crush on my college algebra TA, and his endearing Oklahoma twang. I was 28 (I'd avoided anything requiring math when I was a Theater student.) Probably a few years older than him, so stop thinking dewey eyed Freshman. I crushed on him in no small part because he barely took points off for dumb arithmetic errors, as long as the equations were correct, and I got a hard earned B+ from him for the final grade. He made story problems easy, the only way to approach mathematics. And he made the distinction between arithmetic and mathematics.

One Friday, when half the class didn't bother to show up, he shared his passion. He demonstrated a proof on the board, coming alive. And I got it. Oh, I could never go there again without a map and a guide, but I could follow him, it made sense, it flowed. Like listening to my Uncle Walt talk about aerodynamics or building stresses. Or our engineer friends talking computers. Or K talking the chemistry of making computer chips. I'm always enamored of deep, loving knowledge, and being given a tour of a different view on the world.

So, why isn't Mathematics, proofs and rationale, taught in grade school? Seems to me essential, the grammar of math, and much more logical than language rules. I loved Geometry in grade school, because there were few numbers, mostly words, and lots of constructions.

I don't see numbers in my head, like I do words and letters. I cannot add up a column of numbers the same way twice. Which went critical in my statistics class. The instructor (I did not have a crush on her) had us manage 20 or so data point numbers as a quiz, five minutes at the beginning of every class. I could apply the equations, if I could have ever gotten through adding up the initial data in five minutes. A classmate tipped me off to the disabled student union. Blessed be, I took my quizzes there, to take as long as needed, number help. Sitting there waiting for a kind counselor to come check my arithmetic, I remembered my oldest brother trying to teach me numbers. Asked me what they looked like. He incited me to give them personalities. Three was angry, five was grumpy, and eight was heavy and stubborn. The numbers, especially those three, writhed and twisted, like letters for a dyslexic. Dyscalculia. All my stupidity in math became clear.

I took me a long time to learn to read a clock. I ignored my long division assignments, until I was caught, and had to learn my multiplication tables. I shied away from numbers, knowing I didn't get them. I wanted to study Meteorology, go chase storms, but knew I'd need a lot more math than I was prepared to handle. Such a timid twit I was.

Just as dyslexia does not rule out reading, my numeral confusion still slows me, but no longer stops me. See that RN behind my name? Yeah, well. But I don't do Pediatrics, because every dose has to be calculated to weight. I know my limitations. I just know to be careful, check, get others to check after me. I do the Soduku as number therapy. My most common mistake is not seeing a numeral properly. I can tell when I am very tired, I do much worse. I still puzzle it out in pen.

I'm terrible at names, too. I wonder if it's related.

Guard (Photo)

Lines

Inspired by Udge whose lyric challenge I could not even hope to figure out, I decided to do one even harder. These are all They Might Be Giant lyrics. All from different songs. If you can guess which song, fine. If not, just let it wash over you as the strangest poetry, since I don't do poems here. And as a bit of a tweak to all those who say they hate TMBG, but only know Istanbul, which is a cover, for one thing.


Its a long, long rope they use to hang you soon I hope
And I wonder why this hasn't happened
Why why why

A furry hat, elastic mask, a pair of shiny marble dice

Blew out your pilot light
And made a wish

Unnoticed by few
Very very few
And that includes you

I don't want a pizza, I don't want a piece of peanut brittle, I don't want a pear.
I don't want a bagel I don't want a bean I wouldn't like a bag of beef or a beer or a cup of chowder, corn, cake, or creamed cauliflower.

Ignore the mountain of discarded falderal

Peter came out and gave us medals
Declaring us the nicest of the damned

Chinese people were fighting in the park
We tried to help them fight, no one appreciated that

And we still havent walked in the glow of each others majestic presence

Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders
What the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of

And when I lean my head against the frosted shower stall
I see stuff through the glass that I don't recognize at all

Jodie Foster held two pair
Bach had three of a kind
Gandhi said, "With my full house,
I will blow your mind!"


I'm searching for some disbelief that I can still suspend
But never mind the furthermore-the plea is self-defense again

While lying there in my bed there was a message for me
As I went through the pillow, I noticed something

Wearing a raincoat is flying around in a yellow rubber airplane
Made out of a raincoat,


I lay out in the sun too long
And burned off all of my skin
I felt so dizzy I got into the car
And got into an accident
Out of the burning wreckage I fell
Wanting only to lay where I fell


The back wheels O is now a letter D
Wreck!
I was an I and now I am a V



I heard they had a space program
When they sing you can't hear, there's no air
Sometimes I think I kind of like that and
Other times I think I'm already there

Fail

Mr. Shirkey laid the paper face down on my desk, saying, dramatically.

"Oh, how the mighty have fallen."

I turned over the lab report on the worm dissection, and was slightly relieved that it was only a D, since I figured I'd deserved an F. I'd had no idea what I'd been looking at at all. I filled in the answers with nothing like a real answer, a muddle, which was all I could see. Anything under the microscope was a blurred mystery. This despite having glasses by the time I was 15, sophomore year. Despite being a straight A student in high school.

Oh, I'd gotten Cs in 7th grade typing, pity grades, since she saw I really tried, but never could get my fingers to do as dib. bod. bid. In lower grades I had occasional Bs in maths, related to numbers turning in my brain from 3 to 5 to 8 and back, which I only figured out in college statistics class (dyscalculia.) Generally, I did well in school, with enough effort to have good study habits.


For non-acedemics, if I figured I was not going to be pretty competent, I would withdraw fairly soon. Violin bruised my chin, and I couldn't finger the strings, did that about a month. Flute I managed one song, the tone never sounded good, that was maybe two months. Rented instruments, nothing much lost. My father thought that the trick to a good life was being able to play an instrument. (He always thought there was a trick to any kind of success. He'd never managed the trick to it, so was where he was.) I was terrific at cutting my losses. I minded my mother telling me I lacked sticktoitiveness.

I failed to have her ironclad faith. Lost it when I was eight, if I'd ever had it at all. I wanted it, prayed for it. Eventually nitpicked that if Faith was a gift from God, and God hadn't seen fit to give it to me, what was I to do? I rather liked that St. Thomas made Jesus prove himself, and was bothered that his unbelief was disparaged. I now think that those who have faith are being cheated of their curiosity and most of their intelligence thereby.

My first marriage failed miserably, due in no small part to my general failure to make friends or lovers. When I learned to make friends, I realized just how badly I'd chosen a husband. I failed, for a year, to get myself out of that abusive relationship.

I'd been working at a survey research center, phone surveys. I came in for my shift. I looked at the phone. I looked at my survey. I looked at the phone. I cleaned everything with alcohol. I looked at the phone. I picked up the receiver. I put the receiver down. I did this for almost two hours. I picked up my knotted stomach, walked up to my supervisor, and told him I had to quit. I simply could not make another phone call, possibly ever again in my life. He nodded, made sure they had my correct address, and wished me luck.

I once worked for a famous dance teaching studio. I could teach dance well. That was not the issue. I would not lie to, nor pressure at every break in breath, my students to sign up for the most expensive dance class packages. They fired me.

I worked night shift as an aide at a nasty little nursing home, all psych patients, about half elderly. Two of the other aides who hated me said I'd pushed a patient. This was the same week I got into nursing school. The nursing supervisor fired me with one of those half assed, ever changing reasons. Afraid they would call my nursing school, I did not fight it, but left in exhausted tears, and indignant fury. Every doubt and fear overwhelmed me. I also failed to report the place, but I did not know enough then.

I took Anatomy 204. Great teacher, great class, I studied pretty well, I thought. Then the midterm appeared before me. Empty lines. Trace a drop of blood from the right ventricle through the right kidney to the liver naming all vessels and organs. List all the muscles, the nerve artery and vein involved in raising your left arm. The following Monday, when the test was passed back, I took a peek, then took myself to the nearest restroom stall, and sobbed. I would get an A on the final, and take the class again, for the A for the class.

In nursing school, I failed daily. I rarely made the same mistakes twice, but I found new ones constantly. So, I was never snotty about asking for someone to check behind me. As a result, when I was in my senior clinicals, I was the one the my clinical instructor sent to the other floor, without her to watch over me, when there weren't enough precepting nurses.

"You'll be fine."

What she really meant was that I was reasonably competent, not cocky. I would ask anyone for help, without hesitation, without ego. She trusted me to neither jump off the deep end, nor stop in my tracks. I probably wouldn't kill anybody. I had learned how to fail, but keep going, turn it around.

I was new in surgery, maybe four months in. I scrubbed, and went to put on my sterile gown. Hit the sleeve on the (unsterile) light. (Damn, blast, idiot snarflebarble... .) Nurse took off my gown, so my hands were still sterile, got another gown, hit the light again. (Stupidstupidstupid... .) Again with the gown, third time in a row, again, I hit the sleeve of the gown on the light. I felt about this ( ` ) smart. I have never contaminated a gown putting it on since. This is the story I tell to newbies in the OR to this day.

"It gets better. Give yourself time, this is hard. Sometimes we forget."

I don't do everything well, but I keep trying. I still screw up numbers, but I double check them. I don't work under microscopes. Still can't play an instrument. I forget stuff. I get the thingmabob on the whatsit the wrong way, and have to redo it. I do not quit because a task is hard. I fall, and keep working until I get the job right. There is no trick to what I do right, save only practice, experience. And remembering, deep in my bones, when I am wrong.

"I screwed up. I am fixing it right now."

Well, hell, makes for a good story, if I tell it right.

Caress (Photo)

Tail

"Vans usually have their tails in motion - in every direction imaginable a habit that is known as "flouncing". The tails seem to function totally on their own. Even when the cat is asleep, its tail remains active and the cat will eventually grab its own tail and pin it under its legs for a more peaceful nap."
-Turkish Van, Swimming Cats
Flushing cat video.


Moby is certainly not a Van, Turkish or otherwise. Not a spot of white on him, a thick undercoat. And Vans are rare. He does play with his water, and doesn't seem to mind a bit of wet, will stick his head under the stream when we pour water into his bowl. We've never seen him flush, but then, we keep the lid down.

His tail does flounce as described above. His shortish, muscular tail, that makes me wonder if he has a touch of Manx, flicks and curls, wags and wriggles. Only when he seems most deeply asleep is it quiet at all. It perks up and curls at the end when we call his name, even when he is busy doing other cat things that we can't understand, and therefore can't stop right now, sorry. We saw him once trying to nap, when the tail was dancing in front of his nose. He irritably reached out a paw and stopped it, as if to say "Cut it out, you."

Sometimes I hold his tail loosely in my fist, feeling the twitch and thrum. Moby seems not to mind.

Over the last two years, we have formed a deep friendship with him. He knows he can trust us, a simple squirm, and he will be set down gently. He will be let out of the bag eventually, Vets are kind to him, and he will come home afterward. He will never be left in a place with dogs and rabbits and other animals for two months, ill with worms and a cold, though well fed, and the people were kind. He knows we never hurt him intentionally, and when a foot hits him, we will apologize and let him hide for a while. Often, chicken will follow.

We, in turn, have learned to trust him. If he puts his claws out, we leave our hand there, and he does not dig in, but retracts, and licks an apology. We rub his tum gently when he is in the mood, but do not play that way, so he does not feel threatened to the point of defending himself with teeth and hind legs thrashing.

We think about him in that shelter. They were careful about sending him home with us, as they told us they were careful about black cats. More so around Halloween. They wanted him to have a home, not be sacrificed. We saw him on the shelter website, and thought him ideal. When we met him, they let us be in a caged area with him. I held him, and he squirmed away, looking for "out", without putting a claw on me. D remembers him climbing over his shoulder, with the same gentle urgency. We knew we would have to earn his affection. We were both hooked. A cat like both of us, not easily won over, no surface shinola, but without malice. We were told his first owner had brought him in because he was at work so much, he did not feel he could take good care of him. It sounds like an excuse, but it feels true enough.

He knows he has taught us well, attentive to feline wisdom. We amuse him, with our strange habits, like never leaving the house once, but always coming back in before leaving. As he amuses us. He likes us to chuckle.

All our quirks together, there is love at home.

Mobi san (Photo)

Doze (Photo)

A Perma Puddle with an illegally (read stupidly) parked car in the pedestrian walkway.

Sleeping along the trail, and on the street.

Bird (Photo)

A new toy, causing much leaping and excitement. And joy when caught. Da Bird.

Omphalos

She lays on the operating room table, under cream cotton blankets, a blue patterned gown peeking out at her side, blue sheet underneath. She is a short, high mound, with a black wide safety strap across her wide thighs. Motionless, she is the center of the activity around her. A tidy, brisk man, in a billowy blue hat covering no hair, saunters in - the Surgeon. He looks at her, craning his neck sideways, while wiping his goggles with the edge of the blanket. A sturdy woman, in green scrubs, black pouch at her waist, purple cotton hat covering all her hair, blue duckbill mask - the Nurse, stands by her side. A tall thin man at the recumbent woman's head, adjusting knobs - the Anesthesiologist, nods.

"You can let go now." And the nurse takes her fingers from the woman's throat.

"Nice lady, but she was not easy, no neck at all." He tapes the tube securely to her mouth, squeezes the black bag to inflate her lungs, closes her eyes with clear tape.

"Not so easy to find her cricoid either." The nurse exposes the round belly, and screws up her face. "Belly button clamp, please m'dear." And reaches out, palm wide open. "Probably for the prep too, but I need to get the top layers."

A man at the opposite end of the room, working at a covered table of instruments, dark green gown, gloved, masked, blue paper hat, the Scrub brings to her outstretched hand a 6" long instrument from his set. "You heard Grace wanted me to translate. I tell her, no, I speak Kurdish, Arabic, some French, but no Bulgarian. She says, 'They are the same aren't they?'"

"She didn't," the surgeon asks, then sees the look from Kamil. "Oh, wait, you said Grace." And chuckles. He is standing, sterile gloves on, by the prep solutions on a small sterile table.

"This is going to be a doozie, Dr. F." She is pulling lint from the umbilicus. "It's not just a little bit. She's got her full 68 years worth in here."

"Oh, don't tell me that."

"Well, the top is black. And, oh, there is more, and more... and more yet." She reports, while working.

She continues meticulously cleaning out the usual incision site. There is quiet in the room, some shuffling around, as she pulls out more organic material. "Aha!"

"What? A Volkswagon?"

"Nearly, an umbilicolith."

Soft laughter. "Good one. Now, I'm afraid of how many gall stones I'm going to find when we get in there, and you already found one in her belly button."

"Can I get paid for an umbilicolithectomy?" Asks the nurse.

"Not unless you are a Nurse Practitioner, sorry." Says Dr. F.

"Can't you make the incision somewhere else? Isn't that going to get infected?" Asks the scrub.

"We can, and with her now, I'll certainly go above a bit. But especially with her, I gotta know where the anatomy is. That is our safe landmark." Dr. F sighs.

"And so grandma's advice to wear clean underwear in case you get into an accident is useless. The ER will cut that off and not notice. What you really got to do is keep your belly button clean, in case they need to do a lap appy, or gall bladder." The nurse is now crinkling up her nose. "I'm down to the earliest archeology, and it's starting to smell."

"Stop, you're making us all sick." Whines the surgeon.

"Hey, I have an immaculate omphalos. I'm just telling you what I'm finding in this poor woman."

"Here, let me do the rest with the prep. Maybe give her some antibiotics. We can't take an hour just cleaning that out." He takes over, pouring the pink soap across her abdomen, peering down. "I think I am seeing blue sheet. You really weren't kidding, were you?"

"I never kid about belly buttons. This one, I am going to tell for the rest of my life. I shall write it in my diary. 'Today, I plumbed the navel depths, and came out alive."


(Seen elsewhere. Here, my version.)

Give

The envelope went into the long handled basket during mass every Sunday, and I was given it to put in. The story of the Widow's Mite was repeated at least every year, to encourage the income. To be fair, mine was not a rich parish, but a declining inner city church with roof and heating shortfalls. Neither was my family wealthy, and that extra bit would have improved essential nourishment significantly for myself and my brothers as young growing bodies. But that was the point, really. Our contributions came from our need, not our want, and was therefore most worthy. I felt quite virtuous at the time. The current problems of the Catholic hierarchy leave me smugly cynical, and satisfied with my choice to shed my religious carapace. I also discarded the Victorian ideal of Charity as a Virtue, knowing it to be cold and manipulative.

When I was in college, there were so many dealers, pickpockets and panhandlers on and around campus, a strip of classroom buildings surrounded by notorious urban streets, I purposefully kept no change in my pocket. In part so that I could honestly say I had no cash on me. Had I given to every beggar, it would have been true anyway by the time I got to the other end of the University. They angered me. They had no more right to my thin scrim of cash than I did, and rather less, since I had worked for mine. I did feel bad for the homeless and suffering, but I had not harmed them, had not stolen their job nor wrecked their lives. I didn't exactly blame them, for the most part. I just didn't think it was within my power to fix them, nor mine to feel guilty for their plight.

Studying history, I came to believe that most charitable intentions went badly awry. The farm subsidies during FDR wound up benefitting large industrial farming conglomerates, and putting small family farms out of business. Used clothing and cash handouts to third world areas create dependence and sap local market initiative. Giving directly to panhandlers benefits the few aggressive ones, who are often users and alcoholics. We are told it's better to give directly to shelters and food banks.


Why, though, when D and I were downtown late one evening, a deserted well lit street, and a young person collapsed in front of us, did I reflexively look away? And D stopped us and went back to help. I felt ashamed, and we called 911, stayed with her, checked her vitals. Drugs, or alcohol, native, very young. The EMTs came and took her to the hospital. What was the threat? Why did I so readily turn my eyes? I say it was old street smarts overreacting. I tell myself that.

I want to be kind, and would never intentionally harm anyone. My instincts are to make myself secure, so that I can help. First Rule of Water Safety, make sure you are safe, or you just get two stiffs in the water. Very professional. Triage. And I believe this is the best I can do, over my long haul. That obvious generosity is self serving, gosh what a good girl am I. When I was in Saudi Arabia, walking around the streets of Riyadh, why then did I always slip a rial or two to the outstretched, black gloved hands of the shrouded women crouched on the curb?


My friend whose childhood poverty was severe, compared to mine, volunteers and gives to charities. Says she valued the given food and clothes when she was small and hungry and cold. I was grateful to have been given much of my clothing, a bed, a bicycle, though never obvious food. There is a balance between being good and being nice, between meddlesome undermining of motivation, and giving essential care. Where do I cross the line between defending my own safety and withholding necessary help for another in crisis?

I do keep asking the question of myself.

Suitcase

"Have suitcase, will travel, that girl." My mother said of me. I was fortunate to have been nearly the sole child in the family when I was small. The relatives were older, had no children, or none at home for a long, long time. And I was, for a child, a good guest.

I was two, the first time, when my mother was in the hospital for a week, a hysterectomy, I found out decades later. I went to stay with my Aunt Alma, who had only married Uncle Milton two years before. She delayed getting her poodle, Gigi, that week, to care for me. I stayed there for at least a week every summer, and often a weekend or so at other times of year, so that I cannot tease out which memories happened when. I still cannot quite believe Gigi was not there that first visit. Uncle Milton was the blur. His Union job in the Detroit auto industry the source of what seemed such wealth to me then, the neat suburban house with bought shrubbery, air conditioning in the car, finished basement, and color TV.

Aunt Alma expressed her love in food. We made bread, my kneading never neared her muscular competence with a ball of dough. She made jam, and bought real butter, and no other bread, butter and jam, will ever taste as wonderful. She sated my craving for fresh fruit, though she did not understand how I could eat grapefruit, or strawberries, without sugar or cream. She fed me corn on the cob, from her garden. She fried chicken and made dumplings. She let me drink Pepsi out of tall tupperware tumblers, whichever of the four colors I wanted.

She took me for walks with Gigi. When I brought my second hand bicycle for visits, to race wildly around the large church parking lot across the street, she got a bicycle and rode with me, much more sedately, and around the block. I believe now that she was rather lonely, and we became friends. She loved to tell the story about me, still high-chaired, when she took a bite out of the toast in front of me, and I snapped out,

"EAT OWN TOAST!"

Which horrified my mother, with a horror of naughty children. And delighted my dear aunt, who rather liked me when I broke out of my shell.

And brushed Gigi's teeth, with the only toothbrush I had.

My other regular suitcase-home was my mother's eldest sister, Aunt Evelyn. We were much more alike than my mother and I, and simply liked to be together. She had a quiet authority that I only tested once, and trusted afterwards. She had some games, and toys from when her son was young, including a small submarine that rose and sank in her sink, with baking soda. I helped her with laundry, a wringer washer, and a clothes line in the back yard. We usually did little more than go to the rose garden in Jackson Park by bus, and then I got to go on the swings.

What I most relished was how she spoke of Ernie, her sweetheart. Uncle Ernie brought her a rose at least once a week. They kissed, hugged, and talked. Peaceably did chores together. Uncle Ernie spent time with me when he got home from work, and took us to get ice cream, or for a walk. Both gave me a view of love, and included me. I never questioned their affection for me.

Both women are part of me, they were my hope. I'd gladly pack a suitcase to see them again. They can have my toast anytime.

Vacation

I once had a three week vacation, when I was ten. Like all vacations involving my father, it had it's fraught moments. Like the accident on the way to the airport, four way stop, and neither father nor truck could manage it. But I was put on the plane, my first flight, in my stiff cotton, mom-made dress (because pants were just not right for an airline trip.) I took many pictures of clouds, endured the long hours listening to the loop of questionable music (is this when I started to hate easy listening?), trying not to feel hurt by the man in the suit who wouldn't talk with me.

My brother and his wife picked me up at the airport, and for the first time I experienced the shock of teleportation as the Phoenix July heat blasted me. Parents and brother Bill, and I visited them two years before, a long roadtrip, taking in the Rocky Mountains and Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. So I knew this was furnace to my Michigan summer steamer. But that moment of transition felt like a door into another universe.

Vacation trips had always been gradual, before. My father got two weeks off in August from the factory, and we were piled in the car in the cool of the pre-dawn, so we could get some miles in, and were driven to a national park, hitting roadside attractions as we went. My brothers and I played games and looked for cheap motels with pools in the AAA book, and preceded the car in the Triptick map, reading the towns to come beneath the yellow highlighter line. We went to the north, and the Sleeping Bear Dunes, or to Canada and Niagara Falls, the Thousand Islands, the interminable Agawa Canyon (slower-than-imaginable) Railway, Virginia Beach, Stoney Creek beach on Lake Erie, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the Smoky Mountains, Loray Caverns, and then the marathon cross country slog, justified by my brother being stationed in Arizona. Not a single one missing the essential element of my father exploding into a embittered rage, personal and petty and mean.

This one I would do all by myself, and eager, even after the crash. Although, my sister-in-law's ill defined notion of discipline, her nascent pregnancy, left me confused. She wanted to entertain me by giving me as much sugar as she wanted, and I never had so much candy, pop and coke slushies in my life. I baffled her utterly, often as not refusing sweets, happily poking around in the desert field behind their house, and reading anything I could get my hands on. Her friend lived in a complex with a pool, and I spent hours each day with the other children diving for a ring thrown in the bottom, floating on inner tubes and generally baking myself brown and freckled. She shushed her friend when they started talking about periods, information I could sorely have used within four months. I worried for her child to be, knowing that as badly as I was being raised, she was not going to do much better.

My brother worked too many hours, and my dreams of re-connecting with him were disappointed. They often had friends over, and drank more than I had ever seen anyone in my family drink before. They made brownies once, chocolate was irresistible to me, and I ate from the wrong half. They left me as they went to a party. I saw She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, in color, on their B/W TV. I found out when I was 20 about the hash, and to this day they think it was funny. To leave a ten year old, unknowingly tripping, alone, and have no regrets. The story is funny. The reality, especially that they had two daughters of their own, is not.

During those three weeks, my sister-in-law had an accident, was hit by a drunk driver. She had whiplash, and wore a neck brace. My brother took us to a cookware version of a Tupperware party. Their dog Boo would sit on me at night, keeping me awake, despite my many attempts to shove him out. He was a pushy Border Collie, completely not trained. Plus two cats who jumped back and forth over the sproinging doorstop in my bedroom. My bed an air mattress on a camp cot. I was up early because I was three hours ahead of them. I became deeply sleep deprived.

We went out to the desert with their friends one night, and as it got later and later, I grew overtired, and fell into a disturbed sleep on a concrete picnic table, feeling like excess baggage. I didn't so much want to go home as to simply stop existing.

I had stepped outside my disturbed reality when I most needed to keep my head down. I found out way too much about another family. I flew back in a dress too tight, bursting at the seams, after wearing nothing but shorts and borrowed jeans (my first pair, how I loved them) for three solid weeks. The intense GREEN of a Michigan summer enveloped me, comforting and homey. The mosquitos didn't love me anymore. I never quite fit anything there again.

I have not yet had a vacation as long. I'm wary of trying.

Sense

I am not entirely sober tonight. I had lost my sense of humor, a crucial element of my personality and my ability to cope with the absurdity and cruelties of life. I dragged myself through work and life. My temper, trained hard to be always kind, patient, cheerful, is not naturally easy going, slipped badly. I snarled and snapped and strained against the drudgery and irritation. I got angry with D, which I consider to be mean, and bad behaviour. I knew I was tired after 30 hours in 3 days while still dealing with pain, but this seemed more than that.

Finally, the light dawned, and I remembered that I had been on a drug for nerve pain, more normally used for bipolar disorders and seizures, the last dose taken Thursday morning. Getting through work was difficult enough to account for my distress and moodiness. The remaining muscle pain and limited mobility produced enough frustration to explain my irascibility. Still. Not getting angry at D. Just not on. The withdrawal factor just occurred to me about an hour ago. Ah. Ahem. Whoops.

So I am working on my mood through the time tested expedient of alcohol as a relaxant. Just until I can get back to my normal level of stress and paranoia. One or two per day, never more. Not much, not enough to be ill, but with D's encouragement, a rarity. Poor guy.

My sense of humor is still not up to an essay, it's probably hiding under the couch, but at least I know it is in the apartment somewhere. This is all taking much longer than would be preferred. Clawing my way to normalcy.

Damn Improbability Drive.


D. So sorry.

Under (Photos)

Under Construction
Under Water
Under Trees amidst the geese.

Cramp

I dream of demons attacking my legs, and half wake to cramps in my legs. Last night a dragon appeared out of the ceiling to bite and gnaw. I am plagued by dreams. Sitting signing books, on an elevator, men putting up a painting, giving a girl a pinwheel, trying to eat some cheese cake I'd put aside, but never quite getting to it. Cannot remember how cheese cake tastes. I call to D and he helps me out of bed.


I'm better when I move. Yoga class, in a week or so, when I feel more stabilized.

I watch Moby, admire and pet him, a great comfort.

One more day on the drugs, hopefully it has given me enough time to heal. The electrical shocks are rarer, and less severe. I have had a beneficial odd schedule, allowing me two more days to rest, then back to work. An invite to visit cousins in a week and a half. I don't know where the writing has leaked from, but it's made quite a puddle.

We journeyed to Cambridge this afternoon, and now I have some maple sugar candy. Childhood rarest treat, and it still soothes me. Dithering in bookstores to help D's thesis research angst.

Yesterday managed to sit most of the way through lunch at India Quality, a needed nourishment. Tired of being so ultra careful, so fraught. I wish I could just ease into this, slide through. But I am irritable and bothered, forcing the cheerfulness. Enduring the limitations with ill grace. Inside at least, trying to put on a good face.

Three days of work to go, 28 hours of skirting disaster. Praying for no combative patients, or heavy equipment moving unexpectedly, or a slippery floor.

Hoping for no more cramp demons.

Specific

This is the Christian Science Monitor series onJill Carroll, abducted for 82 days in Baghdad*. In keeping with my thesis that the specific is universal, and informs the truth more than sweeping political doctrine. I likewise recommend the writings of Terry Waite, who I had the honor to hear talk, an enormously kind and genuine presence.

Thus ends my ranting on this forum.

World (Photos)

Recuperation means a small world, this is mine.

Ago (Meme)

Moira's answer

I'm tagging all you hug senders, and lurkers. With affection.

10 years ago
At 34, I was in my first year as a surgical nurse. Deeply stressed, crying in frustration often, but in no doubt that I was where I belonged. I was also planning my first tattoo, shaved my head, and was taking care of D and his smashed elbow. Hell of a year.

5 years ago
At 39, I was professionally solid, and learning to be a Recovery room nurse, and got the position of a room charge, with my own regular surgeons to memorize and cater to. They were kind and grateful, mostly. D was returning to school for his history degree, a jump from the IT job dissolving in the dotcompost.

1 year ago
I was just hired as permanent full time in the main OR here in Boston, after a year as a Traveling Nurse. I could find my way around Boston without a map. I was healthy and walking miles a day.

5 songs I know all the words to
Dead by They Might Be Giants
Sonny Came Home by Shawn Colvin
Learning to Fly by Talking Heads
Reflecting Light by Sam Phillips
Indian Paintbrush by Trapezoid

Innumerable Sacred Harp songs, hymns, novelty songs, Tommy The Who, Mary Poppins, bad pop, cadences, and folk songs.

5 Snacks
Trader Joe's potato crisps
Nuts of all kinds except walnuts
Nutella by finger (the real reason I don't share my Nutella)
Corn chips with salsa and guacamole
Fresh fruit

5 things to I'd do with £100 million
Four Tumbleweed tiny homes, with a netted courtyard, workshop,
library, pottery studio, solar panels, windmill etc.
Set up a foundation to seed smart ideas, and have a place to
work. Will assist lots of friends with this
Get an art degree
Travel
Daily massages

5 places I'd run away to
Lava Hot Springs, Idaho
Sleeping Bear Dunes, Michigan
Moab, Utah
San Francisco, California
Gloucester, Massachusetts

5 things I'd never wear
Crotch level short skirts
Platform shoes
Spike heels
Low cut cleavage (Don't have any)
Large rings with 'real' stones

5 favourite TV shows
Frank's Place (deceased)
Veronica Mars
Joan of Arcadia (deceased)
Emergency Vets
Strange Luck (deceased)

5 greatest joys
That D loves me
That Moby loves both of us, in his feline fashion
Friends of intelligence and taste and kindness
Unexpected compassion from anyone
Wildlife on my walks

5 favourite toys
Cat toys for Moby
iBook
Slinkys
Kites
Camera

Odyssey

The spasms roughly rouse me from deep sleep. Hard aches from hip to foot, tingling, numb, no ease. This is a quantum difference from the previous discomfort, and I know I'll be calling to see my doctor when the office opens, now truly afraid I've left it too long.

D walks me over. Walking is tricky, but I could not compass the thought of a cab, and it really isn't far. I have a very good primary care physician. She is utterly professional and sympathetic, and immediately gets the ortho PA to come look at me. He gives me an anatomy lesson, verdict - herniated disc. Sometimes they heal, listen to the pain, steroid injections are... I stop him. Can we just start there? Yes, yes indeed. MRI scheduled for that day, injection tomorrow. More than a little confusion about where the imaging place is. Sent to the wrong office, use all our available cash ($5) on the cab to there. Office staff confused, then gives useless directions to the right place, the slot I can have if I can be there at one.

Directions, maps even, in Boston, need to be very clear. Three rights do not make a left. We walk, me carefully, but determined, flames of electricity dogging my steps. We collar a woman in postal uniform, eating a take-away salad. She gives better directions than the office staff did. A panicky, late to get into my precious slot, in the hotting up sun, stagger into the less than obvious place, five minutes late. They are kind and professional, and take us in. I toss a strawberry candy from their basket at D, who is hungry and fading, but steadfast, and reading Thud!

Shoes off, shorts with metal zipper off, scrub pants on, watch to D, I pad in and lie down as instructed.

"Are you claustrophobic?"
"No."
"Good, that'll help."

Pillow under my head and knees. She gives me earphones and slides me into the narrow white oven... um, machine. She tells me to lie very still. The earphones are playing commercials at me, for the National Guard - I roll my eyes at my tunnel ceiling, then I hear Elton John promoting this NICE soft rock station, and cringe. After she finishes with instructions and a last "You ok?" I reach down and kink the tube with one hand, and listen to the whirrs and rhythmic thunks, whines and chugging of the machine, and try to decide if I can feel the magnetism. Wondering if that in itself is a kind of treatment. I am utterly still, this is cake, easiest pose I ever had, and I've held harder ones longer. I relax and let it happen. I close my eyes, because the space is really small.

I am born easily, pulling my arms in slightly. She helps me sit up.

I clutch my large envelope of MRI films that I will need to take with me in the morning. We take a short walk to the train station, with good directions this time. D sits and reads, I pace and enjoy the breeze. Four trains go the wrong way, then one our way marked "No service." We catch the next one, and get off at Fenway. Something jogs the envelope from my grip and it is lying on the track. I lurch down and grab it, keeping the door open so the train won't start up. Hugging the films.... I don't know how it feels to be struck by lightening, but... I am crouching on the asphalt platform as the train pulls away. I stagger to the iron fence and grab it and gasp, sob wretchedly as the whole body explodes in sparks, and I try to breathe through the involuntary wracking tears. I wonder now if anyone was watching, wondering what the hell was going on with me.

On that 1-10 pain scale, I have a new 10. D stands beside me, helpless, but present. I grab his shoulder and use him to walk. My body is in that limb-went-to-sleep-and-is-now-waking-painfully zinging. Tears pour, I breathe and walk as near normal as I can, and the pain fades to a manageable say 8/10. D my crutch, my rock. He settles me home, then gets good pizza for our long overdue lunch.

Sleep is elusive and as the unblunted force penetrates rest. No drugs, no anti-inflammatories allowed this night. I am up at 4, needing to move, unable to move much. D gets me dressed, underwear and socks, shoes and shorts all beyond my ability. I'd have looked silly and gotten arrested just in a t-shirt.

I walk over, D waits at home for a package at my insistence. I can walk, the one movement left me that eases. I walk on a leg with an electrical short, but it works. He will come over when I am finished to bring me home. I sign in, and am offered a seat. I find a Metro and read leaning against a wall, wriggly as a kindergartner. I go for the x-ray, remove all but the irreplaceable underwear and socks, and don a large burgundy gown. The x-ray table is hard, the tech helps, but there is no comfort for me.


I manage to replace the shorts, but the left shoe is just slipped on, laces hanging. More waiting, more leaning, pacing the halls, careful not to trip myself. I watch a woman tie her husband's shoes, apparently post procedure. I smile in recognition. After a small eternity, my name is called.

A lovely young woman with impressive dreadlocks manages to check vital signs without requiring me to sit. The doc, an anesthesiologist enters, points out the herniation on the MRI, and another, and another very small one. Has me sit on the exam table, feet on a chair, and palpates my back as I endure. I am usually on the other side of this, I am the holder, I face the patient and urge them on, reassure and coach. My coach asks me to keep my eyes open to watch me. I do. I feel like an over-tight band about to snap, but I know the position, I open my spine and eat the agony.

"She's clamping down on me."
"I'm sorry."
"Not your fault."

I can do something about it though. I breathe yoga, and force myself down until the heels of my hands are on the arms of the chair. He makes success sounds, warns me that I will feel the meds go in. Pain spent now for better result after, oh, yeah, whatever it costs.

"You don't smoke, do you?" After a comment about the last patient who does. They can tell.
"No."

I fear implosion, as hot lead squeezes down my butt, thigh, legs, then knives with the "Lidocaine chaser."

"Can I move?"
"Just wait a moment... Ok, the needle is out. You can move."

I let my left foot slide off the chair, and close my spine. They compliment me on my cooperation, approve of my general health and that I walked there. My face is wet with quiet tears. I retrieve my films, get my instructions, D arrives and we gingerly wince home.

D opens the expected box. It is the DVD player for the TV, for distraction for me. I enter the world of Tom and Barbara Good. He remembers when I got him High Noon and The Cheap Detective the night he broke his arm. He feeds me, and worries. I try to be brave and not whine too much. I go about the work of healing.

Loopy

My doctor said this stuff would help with nerve pain, and not effect my head. Not like the proffered narcotics that I eschewed. It is normally used for seizures and bipolar disorders. It is certainly helping with the pain.

But I am so high. Sometimes the world spin is detectable and disorienting. Sometimes I laugh for no obvious reason. I talk in a rush, of ideas that don't quite fit together. It has not been 24 hours since the epidural, so I can't take a shower yet. I feel grimy.

I woke at five AM in extreme discomfort. D put on some dance music, and I moved in gentle bellydance to loosen the spasming. Stiff, careful movements. I dragged the rope for Moby to chase, in time to the beat.


I read your words of kindness and concern, support and understanding. So wonderful to feel a part of this community.

Going to have a popsicle.

This is eating my planned vacation week, but it beats not having the time at all.

See? Loopy.

Update

Not one, but three, herniated discs. MRI, epidural injections, all done. On my back and not tracking well, but not crying, either. Should have taken the narcotics, but did not want to go there.

Ow.

Wist (Photo)

Obs. rare. [app. back-formation from WISTLY adv.]

Attentive, intent.

An image from last fall, an interactive art installation on the MIT campus.

Sweets

When I was small, I was such a little hummingbird. Sweets, fruit and brightly colored food were irresistible. I vividly imagine myself on an overgrown embankement on Hines Drive, nestled in amidst berry bushes. Blackberries. On my hands, staining my face, a few odd ones in the pail.

Cake, particularly birthday cake, was worth eating, to feast upon the hollowed out wedge of chocolate frosting. Or white frosting. Icing roses. Imagine, please that all this frosting was not out of a little tub, but homemade. Thick, a little crusty, more like fudge. Not eating the cake was not an option, just like dinner had to be got to in order to deserve dessert, so the cake must not be shunned (that being rude) but must be eaten in order to lick the frosting.

I loved fluffer nutters on Wonderbread, especially squeezed into a tight white ball of sugary wadding. I have even mixed marshmallow fluff with Karo corn syrup. Vanilla wafers with extra frosting, either leftovers from the last birthday cake, or the tub when that became available. When mom baked pie, a standard for any family gathering, and an orgy of sugar and crust, chocolate and nuts, I would get a piece of dough to eat. I would layer on nuts and brown sugar, fold, repeat until it was nearly egg shaped. Mom always wanted to bake it, and sometimes did. I preferred it raw and chewy. Cohesive.


And, like most children, I grew out of it. My tongue sought out less obvious pleasures. Stronger tastes, bitter flavors. It makes good evolutionary sense, most poisons are bitter, alkaloids, and will kill a child in smaller doses than for an adult. Adults use these same compounds as medicine, and in food at least - mild mind altering substances.

We lay in bed last night, listening to a guitar version of Musorgski's Pictures at an Exhibition, and admitting to former, more pop tastes, in classical music. I had Hooked On Classics. A valuable, if sugary step in my musical education. I loved it, could hum along, whistle it even. I am embarrassed to admit as much now, disco classics. Still, it opened that world to me. But like a potty chair, a great early triumph, not something to be brought up too often, or in depth, or really at all. Just as today, I rarely eat gooey sweets.

Not everyone follows this, of course. It is a general tendency. Some folks could eat only sweets all their lives, from the bottom of a treacle well and becoming very ill indeed. Some children like beer and coffee. Just as some adults never develop their musical tastes, still enjoying pop music from when they were young, never challenging themselves to venture out. And I wondered if taste is also a matter of growth and experience, at least in part. The over sweet and under flavored, favored by children because it really does simplify complex experiences, grow obvious and bland over time. Subtlety and texture, complexity and an edge of danger exert a more powerful appeal. Maybe it is not just in the tongue, but the brain becoming more sensitive, affecting other aspects of appreciation.


It's just a crackpot theory, the musings of a summer night, with Andreas Segovia.

Heatwave (Photo)

Moby copes with the high heat and humidity, in part, by laying on my silk shirt. On top of a pile on my mostly unused chair in front of my mostly unused computer, while I stand with the laptop. Which is also why the dearth of photos lately. IPhoto is on the iMac, not the iBook.

Sorry 'bout that.

Scar

The first acupuncture needle went in painlessly. This surprized me slightly. Some did hurt. For some, he had me take a deep breath. I was attentive and cooperative, trying not to be a nurse/bad patient. When I was needled on one side, he covered me with one of those foil thermal blankets., and my own metabolism warmed me. Felt like it was being held up, tent-like on the spiky projections. Some of the most painful punctures eased, disappeared from my senses. Others that I had hardly noticed began to ache. The pain seemed to travel from place to place, to swell and shrink. I became fascinated with the subtle movements, like watching waves in my mind's eye. I tried to tune out the soothing, repetitive music, and remember not to move, as I was covered in spines.

He retuns, and turns on the lights, covering my dark adapted eyes, and deftly removes the needles. I revolve, and the process repeats, the pain not always where expected, just as in massage. I am diagnosing myself, processing the newer metaphors of Chinese medical theory. The flow resumes, heat and ache, electricity and life, sinuses clogging, and I hear the storm hitting, through the walls. Booming thunder far more reassuring than the music playing through again.

The experience continues through my week. Definite improvement in my energy level, the pain in the rest of my body gone. The focus of pain is the same, but has changed, less persistent. I still have to stand, but I can sit to eat lunch tolerably, and walk afterward. My gait is normal, save for a few minutes first thing in the morning. Sitting on the Throne is not a torture, with predictable positive unclenching. After a twelve hour shift, I am tired, but not depleted, as I have been so often.

This is the right therapy, I feel certain. This is not, primarily, a physical trauma I am trying to heal. I am the sum of myself and the roughing up life has given me. I'm not going to get rid of the scars, but I can integrate them, use them, learn from them. I have known too many women who wax on about "learning experiences" but never actually seem to learn anything. This hurts, I will not like the hurt, but I can wring out the lesson, and change.

And change again.

And change again.

And still be the little girl who moved a concrete drainspout with neighborhood kids, and still has the scar down her shin to prove it. Prove that I lost my grip on it.

I sat on the closed toilet seat, tears running down my face, as my brothers put the entire box of band-aids across the laceration, glad that they kept our easily panicked father away from me until mom got home. I was crying, but I was also watching the blood, the process of cleaning and bandaging, staying very still.

Salsa

This was a comment on another site that got too long~

A really healthy marriage is about being defenders of each other's solitude.

Occasionally taking a selfish day, and being given it, gladly.

Never taking it for granted. Always being grateful, and generous. It takes a zenlike attentiveness. Done well, the burden is lighter, never heavier.

Unless the beloved is suffering, and I cannot help. Then, it is unbearable.

But on a more prosaic note~



D and I cannot shop. Especially not for food. We walk into a grocery store, and cannot figure out what we want to make for dinner, what food to have in the house. It comes in part from living a block away from a large grocery store for many years. Several trips in a day to finally, actually, get what we talked about needing the night before, was not unusual.

The rule about not going shopping hungry doesn't work for us. Today we had a lovely lunch at India Quality, then stopped for groceries. It took a great deal of will to walk out with makings for dinner. Had we just come out with mustard, a roll of paper towels and a lemon, it would not have been unusual.

There was a phase where we kept thinking we had salsa, so didn't buy any, only to get home and we were out. So, over the next week or so, we remembered salsa. Wound up with four jars in the fridge, each time exclaiming,

"Oh, yeah, we finally did get salsa."

To this day, when in the grocery store, if we seem to be starting this cycle of confusion again (it has happened with other items, to a lesser extent) we say, "Yeah, but do we have salsa?"

This may have also been the time I couldn't get the jar open, and tried the trick of turning the jar over and hitting the lid on the counter. Only I must have slanted it a bit, and it shattered into a shower of glass and salsa and, indistinguishably, my blood. It was shocking, and very funny.

We do, in fact have three jars of salsa right now, but that is variety, not brain cramp. Really.


(Still having to stand to write, so these are patchy posts, scrabbled writing. Moby's eye looking better, D's knee will have a scar, but is healing. I can sit through lunch, which is a vast improvement. When normal service resumes, assume I am feeling all well.)

Veterinarian

It's been a rough week on all three of us. Tuesday, Moby started having one eye tear, and open less than the other. Calls to the vet suggested a wait and see approach. Yesterday at work I tried to call D, and left a message. Then I got this email:


Moby's eye is looking more swollen than it was, so I'm going to take him to the vet. I hate to make him go through it, but I'm starting to worry about it getting worse, and I want to take care of it in case it needs something besides just waiting for it to clear up.

Since it's mid-day, the waiting room may not be so crowded with dogs, and maybe we won't have to wait so long.

I love you. I hope your day is going OK.
-----------------------------
And not too much later:

We're back from the vet. Moby was about as unhappy about getting into the carrier as you can imagine. It took a few very exciting minutes to get him in it, and in his struggle to stay out, he gave me a 4" scratch on my right knee. Ouch.

He meowed the whole trip to the MSPCA, but he calmed down once we were there. The Dr. who saw Moby was really good with him, and he said that Moby acted more like a dog than a cat, by which I assume he meant that Moby didn't have to be restrained while being examined. Yet another indication that Moby is, in fact, the Best Cat Ever.

There weren't any indications of any more serious illness, which is good. He gave me a tube of a topical antibiotic that needs to go on Moby's eye 3 times a day, and he showed me how to put it on (which is going to be quite a trick).

Moby actually got back into the carrier fairly easily, and he was pretty quiet waiting for the cab. He meowed again on the way back, but not too badly. It was a shorter and slightly smoother trip.

He's stretched out on the carpet right now, and he seems much happier.

I hope things are going well. I love you.
-----------------

Moby is taking the ointment better than expected, and his eye is looking less swollen today, though with a fair amount of discharge. He seems to be generally feeling better.

Poor wee cat.

D's scratch is looking better.

Who

My mother and I sang together. Pop songs, old songs, hymns and carols, children's songs. The record player was a turntable in a small case. Her classical records were kept in her bedroom closet, brought out to look at, but rarely played. Ballet music, I think.

I was allowed the turntable, and access to my children's albums, in my room, and when the older brothers left home, their leftovers. Mom refused to make the record player easier to access for the stated reason that my father would listen all day long to a single country record. She detested Grand Ole Opry. The explanation had the ring of bitter truth. He had no music in him, and rusted out a pair of songs, in bits.

"I love you a bushel and a peck. A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck."
and,
"Mademoiselle from Amentiers, parlez vous. Mademoiselle from Amentiers, parlez vous. Hasn't been kissed in forty years, hinky dinky parlez vous."

That was it. In indecipherable tunelessness.

I devoured what recorded music I had. The soundtrack for Mary Poppins. (Loved the deliciously ironic Stay Awake.) Later, the left-behinds. A Crosby Stills Nash and Young live album. And Tommy, The Who. The latter, I had memorized. Tended to skip the long guitar solos, since I couldn't sing along. I had very few records of my own, an expense not often indulged. A couple of John Denver albums - I had a friend who was obsessed, a huge fan, so I picked it up to have common ground.

What I really loved was folk music, what is now called international music. Difficult to find then. Lively, minor key, complicated rhythms, the odd, the unusual, the genuine un-processed sounds. I went along with pop because it was easy, omnipresent, I could sing along, a subject of conversation. I interned at a NICE radio station when I was going through broadcasting school. I couldn't stomach it today. Such pap, musical cheese-whiz.

When I met D, found out he was a guitarist, and a big fan of The Who. And here I was, with one of their albums in my head. I learned to appreciate guitar solos. He learned to like Klezmer. Both of our tastes have changed and grown. We have days of music, MP3s, today. Much of it is mine.

No taking the easy paths to nowhere.

Pins

I have not written. I cannot sit long. I am standing now, the laptop on the high counter, leaning against a barstool.

Almost a year ago, I had a little incident, wherein I was beaten up in order to restore breath and life. The subsequent pain has crawled around my body, in no small part emotional, omnipresent, to greater or lesser degree. I am heartily tired of it. I have chased it hard, with massage, chiropractors, and exercise when possible, heat, cold, rest, stretching, drugs. All at a time and sequentially. Nothing seems to help deeply, or for long. More migraines than I have had for a decade - but that may just be the hormonal changes of the mid 40's. At my wit's end, I am reaching out to a different modality. Not shots and surgery, this is too amorphous, too chronic for Western trauma, reactive medicine.

I have been dreaming about sticking needles into the current sore spots, so electric is the pain. This made me consider when I got an invite from a newly opening office with both massage, and acupuncture. Well, I began chiropractic to immense relief about 7 years ago , in another state, for exactly the same reason. An ad in the mail, when I was home nursing my spasming back. It turned my life around, without exaggeration. The chiropractors I have seen here are not up to the job. Some relief, but no progress, no deep improvement, bare maintenance.

Life has often quietly offered me answers to my problems. When I have been attentive and tried, I have found ease and friendship and the path through. When I ignore the whispered hints, I wind up in deep, sticky mud. Looking back, I am not sure if I missed an offer, or if I am only now ready to need it.

I'll let you know next year if this was the right choice. It does take a while to know. But the idea of being a pincushion is appealing right now, and that can't be right, unless it is right.

Urban (Photos)

Drag

I'm waiting to see Transamerica. I am not sure I will like it. I really didn't like Pricilla Queen of the Desert, gone to on the recommendation of a friend who thought it hilarious. She is gay, and I took it as a test of my openmindedness. I failed. I don't get transvestites, in particular the over the top performers. The public performance by men of female stereotypes, as though they as men could DO women, better than women, always struck me as insulting. Blackface.

The performance transvestite man is recreating, mocking, the whore woman, the woman created to entice men, and as such, is my sticking point. I have had to realize it is not so simple, that the motivations behind the female impersonators are not clear cut, not all the same. Still. I am no fan. I feel ridiculed and offended. I don't get what is so funny. Then I turn it around in my mind again, and remember Dolly Parton. Who I have always liked. She takes that set of flamboyances and gives 'em a big wet hug.

I have softened my opinion about female impersonators over the decades, let go of taking it as a personal affront. Dave Foley of Kids in the Hall, acts out female characters that are not Milton Berle hashes, or even the Monty Python harridans. He makes himself into a normal looking woman, trying to be attractive without prostituting the image, then finding the comedy.

It's not about minding a man who has a fetish - none of my business, whatever floats boats and all. And I am cool with men who feel female, and try to live outside, the way they feel inside. Even more understanding for the transgendered, ambiguous and androgynous, from either end of the spectrum. Human sexuality and gender are bendy fluid and peculiar.

I don't put men in a rigid set of behaviour box, and I will not go in one myself. I think this is the heart of feminism, a feminism that says we are all human, a feminism that takes the mother's view that all humans are from her body, and are all beloved. None are to be judged by genitals first and last. I heard the criticisms of Gloria Steinem, a joke woman, a man hater, bra burner, and did not question it much, until I heard her on the radio myself. She was utterly rational, reasonable, humane, and funny. I began to understand the fight she was up against as she jerked at the assumptions of her society. No man hater, a truly compassionate and brilliantly political human who shouldered a huge heap of blame and anxiety.

I would today change my self-defined word to Androgynist, to clarify. To draw back from wrenching the once male-defined toward the female-defined just to get it out of the extreme position, and closer to the middle. More subtle adjustments are needful now. Gender bigotry is still defended, often with religion, sometimes with limited liberality. This is what I scent in my own attitude, that I will go this far, but that is beyond the pale.

Maybe the Drag Show will eventually fade into the obscurity of the once seemingly unkillable TV variety shows, I Love Lucy reruns, Rocky sequels, and yes, minstrel shows. Anachronistic holdouts, but eventually evolution wins. If it doesn't, I will accept that it is not what I thought, and look at it from another, perhaps queerer, angle.

Bed (Photo)

Moby Talks.

Wild

But first, Qarrtsiluni has graciously put up a short short of mine, Fish. Better yet, an image Skyfishin response that proves that the picture is worth more than 100 words.




Wednesday, on the way to the dentist, I took the shorter walk through the park to the single train stop, rather than the three line hub. Through the Fenway.

All the geese were standing there, perhaps 40 of them, across the lawn, in the water, along the path, spaced about a meter apart and looking left. All of them. I am nervous around geese. When I was 10, I went to pet one at Sea World, despite being warned, and got a painful nip to teach me this was a wild creature capable of defense. I excused myself, out loud to the phalanx of geese, and felt the hot hostility as I crossed their picket. Great relief after passing through unscathed.

Thursday morning, I did the same, in the cool of 0600 after night storms. There was a new orange ball in a gutter puddle, and I picked it up. Only a little grimy, one of those novelty gel things, and I walked with it across the street, tried to bounce it. It bounced badly, but took the slope and scampered off down toward the basketball courts, looking like it was happily running home.

I stopped on the poohstick bridge and watched a half dozen foot and a half long carp like fish swimming in the current for several minutes. Missing a train, of course. But the next came soon enough, and beside me on the window crawled an orange Ladybug. At the transfer station, I watched a tiny, mud grey mouse on the tracks.

Last evening, I walked back the same way, and watched dragonflies skimming the still surface of the muddy water, and a turtle poking it's nose up.

I feel blessed.

Status

This week I have seen two young men on the train with Official Baseball Hats. I know this, because they'd left the stickers on the brims. Neither looked at all 'cool,' putting me in mind of Minnie Pearl instead - unwilling to remove any of the decoration, including the price tag, from her hat. Minnie, of course, was the stage persona of a talented, savvy woman. These sad young men were searching for acceptance and admiration from a holographic sticker. Proof that they had the cash to buy, or the cajones to steal, the Real Thing, to be part of a professional team, a powerful and popular institution.

I know women who love burberry. Ugly plaid, I think, although quite distinctive. I see it all over the place, and think of those who sport it - how pretentious. How status conscious. What do they think other's think? Do they imagine I notice their pricey item, and envy them? Proof, in my mind, that we never really know what is in another mind. Neither mockery nor admiration.

I discovered that a certain brand name designer really does make clothes that are flattering on me, because of a discount store I have access to these days. I like the quality, well sewn, soft durable fabric. I cut off labels, and hide the prestige. Is this better? I am not sure, although I will wear these clothes when I am home alone as often as when I am in public.

D has expressed dismay at his own standing, in his mid thirties, compared to fellow grad students who have trod a more common road. They will be managers and administrators. D will not, nor does he want to be, but he still feels... compared is perhaps the word. Floating outside a definable form.

I can appreciate this. I do find some ease in having a recognizable profession. But I know when I say "I'm a surgical nurse," that the image in their minds has little to do with my reality, probably. Like when we tell people we are married, with a relationship that seems little like the stereotypical image of marriage. No house, no car, no kids, what do we think we are playing at? But I refer to him as husband in impersonal social situations - it saves time and effort, and pointless explanation. Shorthand sufficient for the interaction. Simplification to the point of inaccuracy.

I don't know what is really in those young men's minds as they sport their Minnie Pearl decorations. Could they both be making a reference to that Grand Ole Opry star? They may pity drab, unfashionable, aging me, if they even notice me. All I know for sure, is that I am walking my own road, with all my heart. Whilst secretly wearing last year's designer styles.

Saint (Photo)

I love 'tobacco cards' - for a burnt martyr.

Canada

On Canada Day, we walked the Boston Freedom Trail. There was a fork near the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial. There were re-enactors at the Old City Hall, and on the site of the Boston Massacre. There were tourists in rainbow shirts at the Franklin memorial (not his grave, that's in Philly.)

Band (Photo)

Paper (Photo)

We are settling in so well here.  Moby is happy.  We were having a  long spate of rain that was making getting out to get litter a massive, insurmountable chore. We decided to  order it delivered.   It was cheaper than a cab ride, put it that way.  Regardless,  the box and long strip of  packing paper has been a delight for creative cat play.  He got up on the footstool and leapt into it, like a kid on a diving board,  several times. Chases the erasermice through the labyrinth of the crinkles, hides under it, surely invisible.   Some people would think a few yards of brown paper in the living room is at best questionable decor.  I am not one of them.