A Good Man Is Hard to Find

On a friend's Facebook recommendation, I think I might break the no-buying policy and get a copy of Brad Gooch's Flannery O'Connor bio. (Certainly solely on his recommendation and not on the wretched review in the NYT a couple weeks back--the way it was written was wretched, I mean, not that it was a bad review. And thus is introduced our theme of precision of language.)

When the book came out, there was some controversy about new revelations, chief being that O'Connor used to seemingly revel in telling racist jokes to a particularly sensitive, liberal friend. I dip into The Habit of Being, Sally Fitzgerald's collection of O'Connor letters, which had expurgated the most obvious offenses, but not all, as you'll see. But the last time I read it through was about 20 years ago. O'Connor's formidable skills as an apologist almost had me getting unlapsed from being a Catlick, as she liked to write it, but I managed to hold onto my Old Time Religion (paganism), thank goddess.

Anyway, the reactions to the racist joke revelations tended to fall into two paths:

1) Oh, dear, I so loved Flannery O'Connor and those quirky Southern "characters" of hers! She was such an eccentric! So weird! So Outsider! Where did she get those names? But now I can't like her anymore, because she's a racist! I will never read her again. Why do all my idols have to fall?

2) She was a woman of her time, and she just couldn't HELP it if she thought like that. Everyone thought like that back then. Look at Fitzgerald and Wharton--they were anti-semites!

Both arguments are wrong in too many ways to know where to begin, and I think, just from my reading, that they're both wrong about O'Connor, too. Her other published letters, while not as explicit as perhaps the material in Gooch's book, make it clear that she just really, really liked fucking with people, especially Northern liberals. Check this little parody piece out from a letter to a friend and see if it isn't kin to Randy Newman's "Rednecks":

"What you ought to do is get you a Fullbright to Georgia and quit messing around with all those backward places you been at. Anyway, don't pay a bit of attention to the Eyetalian papers. It's just like Cuddin Rose says all us niggers and white folks over here are just getting along grand--at least in Georgia and Mississippi. I hear things are not so good in Chicago and Brooklyn but you wouldn't expect them to know what to do with theirself there."

She thought James Baldwin was a blowhard and got ticked when people kept telling her she had to meet him. But she also got ticked when her Catholic friends tried to make her go to Lourdes (and she made fun of the place, even as she caved and went on a pilgrimage). She was terribly impatient with the veneration of the Virgin, and she said just looking at the book The Nun's Story made her want to throw up. And all this from one of the most devout, thoughtful, committed Catholics anywhere. She mocked hypocrisy wherever she found it, flicked her own forehead for her petty sins of pride and vanity (without making a big, breast-beating deal out of it--because that's about the most vain, prideful thing to do of all). I recognize in the letters the character in the stories who is the modern thinker, the enlightened progressive, and usually grotesquely evil (she preferred, by the way, word grotesque to the word gothic). I speculate that in those characters she saw herself as she sometimes was, might have been, might be, but, quite literally, for the grace of God.

In short--equal opportunity hater, a woman with little time or patience for anyone. "My question is usually, would this person be endurable if white?" she wrote in another letter. And she found very few whites endurable. I don't think anything really mattered to her but the truth of the incarnation, the mystery of flawed people making up the perfect Church, and the mortal modern error of denying the existence of the Devil. Her God stops at nothing, including allowing the death of his son and self, asking simply if he deigns to speak at all: Where were you when I made the world?

None of which I believe, and none of which robs her writing of a bit of power for me.

It's not about people with funny names and odd habits and colorful diction. It's not about color much at all, but about our reaction to it, and our desperate need to believe we are good, decent people, when by most lights, we are pretty shaky, maybe mostly monstrous, and by the lights of a Catholic like her, without grace we are all condemned, and all the rearranging of bus seats in the world (Everything that Rises) won't change that.

I think if O'Connor were alive today, she might well be like Colbert or Sarah Silverman--or at least writing sketches making fun of movies with a Magic Negro, maybe, or the Crying Indian. Colbert popped into my head because he is also a Southern Catholic, and because of his still untopped and wildly, widely misunderstood jerimiad at the Correspondent's Dinner. But I'm glad she lived and wrote when she did.

And Fitzgerald and Wharton? Fitzgerald was a basket case who was so insecure he'd put anyone down that he could get away with. He wasn't so much a racist or anti-semite as a narcissist (those are related a lot, I think). But don't forget the venal Tom quoting Henry Ford in Gatsby. Balance goes to Fitzgerald. As for House of Mirth, Rosedale and Lily are two of a kind, the only ones who see the whole game and realize they have to play it carefully, and see each other playing it. He always respects her skills, but it isn't until the end that she sees past her prejudice and respects his. The snap judgments are in the mouths of the characters, not the author, in that case, I believe.

Photo: Once I went to Macon and everyone there kept telling me about Flannery O'Connor and Duane Allman. I don't know as how they had read or listened to much of either, respectively. It got annoying, because I am extremely fond of both. I have a story based on it maybe I'll polish up.

Keeping Up Appearances

"Modern society is too quick to judge people on their appearances. There is not much you can do about it; it is the way they think; it is the way they are. But maybe this could teach them a lesson, or set an example."
The Talented Voice and Impeccable British Phrasing of Miss Susan Boyle, 47.

I confess to sinning in this regard myself, because I watched five minutes of The Cougar and judged it entirely on appearances. The interior design of that house they were in made me cringe. Jesus, the leather, the iron, gaaaghh. It was like the house James M. Cain describes in the opening of Double Indemnity, on steroids.

I watched long enough to see the young men toasting on a party bus, then sliding slickly into the manse on a hair gel disaster of Valdez proportions. But even the vision of Vivica A. Fox poured into that ruched emerald charmeuse number couldn't distract me from that awful faux primitive tile.

So I switched over to In Treatment. That Gabriel Byrne, he's OLD, man. But he looks like he's really keeping himself up. Good for him! Stayin in shape! Good on you, dude!

Oh, he can really act, too. Almost forgot about that part.

The TV watching came just because I was looking for something to do while I enjoyed my two-three times weekly cigarette. I love to smoke, but I don't have time to do it very often. So yesterday I got home from work, got my kid, went to my friend's house for the kiddie Seder (9 kids under age 9), helped with that, came home, helped get my kid to bed, helped her past a meltdown inspired by my not letting her stay up all night and read, finished up some work, poured a glass of wine and sat down on the couch with the windows open and the fan on, and what should be just starting but...So I tried, and failed, to watch a full episode of a reality show, again.

But I was inspired to write a poem while running this morning.

To A Cougar
Dear lady, cease your striving, for they have not what you seek--
The breath of promotional vodka and Axe cologne from these Young Masters reeks,
And tomorrow's nachos soon lay waste to this night's taut physique
I tell you truly, best succumb to charms of the regal Vivic(a).

(For it is no secret that the fairest of the Deadly Vipers has my heart entombed
Ever since I saw her fire a gun through the bottom of a box of Kaboom.
But forgive me, lady, as I get distracted
From this TVland reality you have enacted.)

Your pride, your hopes, the fierce strength of your dream
Will come to naught, for I suspect most of these guys play for the other team.
While naught is wrong with that, no naughty nights ensue
For tis not their inclination to be that into you.

Bright golden Cougar, do not be trapped by time
You could still turn this bus around while in your prime:
Make a startling publicity-engineered revelation that it is really older men you prefer,
Marry a rich retired commercial real estate broker, settle in, and lick your fur.

The Lady or The Tiger, The Cougar, or The Fox?

Because of my nom de blog, people sometimes send me cougar-related news. That and the ads everywhere you look made me aware that there's a "reality" dating show featuring an "older" (40, jesus on a ritz, she's only fucking 40!) woman and younger "men."

I named myself "cougar" out of irony, because I'm often surrounded by women with the dry-cleaned jeans and the manicures and the big, ugly, overpriced handbags, expensive jewelry, and I'm kind of in awe of them. I feel like I'll never measure up to what a woman of my age (47) is supposed to look and act like. I don't do manicures or makeup most of the time, I don't wear much jewelry, I can never seem to care about designers or men with money, I'm always doing foolish things--I'm just out of place, as always. So the name is a joke.

But back to the show. For once I'll be like my mother and just believe and quote unquestioningly what I read in the New York Times: Their reviewer said the young gentlemen were indistinguishable save for their haircuts, and wondered how anyone could keep their attention on a 40-year-old anonymous blonde when Vivica A. Fox, the host of the show, was in the house.

The really weird part is it's on TVland, the home of Brady Bunch reruns. Well, OK, Florence Henderson, someone had to say it. She had some Wessonality allright.

I was hoping to dig up some blogger rage about all this, but all I found even remotely readable was a a woman on Huffington Post who's all ticked about the show and says she's "the real cougar woman." That's kind of funny. She doesn't look like a cougar, either. She looks like a nice midwestern lady, and she's writing about things like her "journey into menopause." Come back, Shane! Guess you never can tell who's a cougar on the inside.

I've never seen a reality show episode all the way through, but I loved a "reality" movie--Series 7, The Contenders, where lottery winners have to shoot each other down to get the money. I was hugely pregnant (just like the star, played by the brilliant Brooke Smith) and laughing my head off in the theater, sitting between BA and my husband, and I think I scared some folks. But that "Love Will Tear Us Apart" video was priceless, wasn't it?

If there were real equality, there'd be a "rock of love" type show where the competing young men would wear silly clothes and get very drunk and stumble around and pee themselves and tongue-kiss for the cameras. Oh, forgot, that's Smith Point!

If there were real equality, there'd be a show called The Old Lech or The Roue or some damn thing with an old guy who likes young girls. Oh, forgot, that's...pretty much everywhere.

If there were real equality, there'd be a show where I could get a date with Vivica A. Fox! Oh, forgot, that's...only in my dreams.

"Guess I'm a Fool; At Least I'm Not Innocent"

Did 10 miles on the towpath today; had been heading for the Crescent Trail, but took a turn at the last minute. Surprised to find easy parking at Old Angler, surprised to find the path deserted north of Great Falls, surprised at my respectable time. Bluebells all the way out and the wind behind me all the way back.

I'm in an odd dull place between any hurts, passions or obsessions. Paying work is only too happy to fill my every moment, and some of this packed-in-cotton feeling is the result of tamping myself down to meet the onslaught of relatives that has come my way in the past few weeks. If this keeps up, I'll have no choice but to become obscenely healthy and work on the novel. I'm tempted to do magic, just to see what spirit or spark or wave manifests, but with all the prosaic plodding, I don't have the time or the head space.

Besides, after a tarot reading I got recently at a witch event, I'm experimenting with not doing much intentional magic. It was a very intense reading with many scary cards (ever get the 9 of swords, the tower, the 5 of wands, the 7 of swords...I mean it was almost a parody!) but the reader couldn't have been kinder or more thoughtful about how he framed things. Nevertheless, what I was seeing--essentially, you will have no place to hide and every compromise and duct-tape solution you thought would hold is no longer viable--came through his words, and halfway through the reading I burst into tears, and kept on that track through the end.

But before that, there was the Fool. And here's how he described that card to me: You're used to thinking: There's something you want, so you choose the time and the accessories and the words carefully, and you create a ritual, and that's magic for you, right? Well, you're not going to need to do that anymore. See, the Fool is walking down the street, and he realizes he's hungry. And right up ahead, there's a hot dog vendor, and the Fool reaches into his pocket, and there's the money, just enough to get a hot dog. But it's only there when he needs it. If he's walking down the street and he's not hungry?--no hot dog, no money. That's the new way magic is going to work for you.

I've been testing the theory.

Right after the reading, I went into the ladies room and was wiping my eyes, and who should appear at the sink next to me but a woman, a writer and teacher who is pretty famous in witch world both for her work and because she is strikingly beautiful and charismatic. The last time I had seen her was 10 years ago in one of her classes, when I had burst into uncontrollable tears halfway through.

It made me laugh (not out loud). I said hi, and that I was looking forward to going to her class later. Then I wondered to myself if I sounded like some weird crying stalker. Then I blew my nose and went out and got some coffee. That's a fool for you.

I don't eat hot dogs, but I have a feeling a symbolic kind of hot dog might be just ahead.

"Symbolic kind of hot dog." That would be a good title.

Photo: Today's headline was written by Mr. Cole, the original big dark brooder.

"It Is Certain," As the Magic 8-Ball Would Put It

Man I'm so tired of working and not sleeping and not running enough and sitting in restaurants and working and sitting in restaurants and working and working all night long. I feel like...hey, here he comes now! All the way from the Seventh Seal, ladies and gentlemen, it's--

(XIII)
Wait, Rider

I chose
My battles
He -- their end
His flag
A rose
The field commands
His crown
The sky
The reins -- clutched
In his hands

Before him
Rises majesty
Beneath -- the bones
Abound -- above
Wait, Rider --
Comes the cry
The hooves
Crush out

The First Occasional Kiss My Happy Heinie Foundation Awards

Because I might spend time in another life under another identity encountering occasional clueless nonprofits that are really good at bumbling away money on "initiatives" that no ordinary human actually putting up some cash money will ever understand or see any results from...I started thinking a few years back that if I had a foundation, I could do better.

It gave me something to think about on long runs--If I won the lottery and started my foundation, how would I do it? I actually get paid to think of names and taglines for nonprofits, and that process can take weeks. But my name and tagline took less than a quarter-mile: The Kiss My Happy Heinie Foundation: Giving Money to Folks Maria Thinks Are Cool. Can't you just hear that on NPR?

Once on a women's weekend, a friend suggested I should soften the name to the Ki-My-Ha-He Foundation, to make it a little more accessible and give it some of that NA cachet, but that would be so damn wrong.

Obviously, this fantasy is well-formed. But you have to have something to think about to make you forget how much your knees hurt.

The "business model" is like the MacArthur: Surprise! Have some cash, you cool person, you! Sometimes I run into people or read about folks I wish I could give a Kiss My Happy Heinie Award to, but alas, I have no money. But this evening I thought, screw it, neither does anyone else, so I'm just going to give away imaginary money.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first occasional KMHH award ceremony. It's all on a blog, so it's virtually free! Which means more imaginary money for you someday, when you win one, too!

From a Washington Post story on Chitown and other web-based micro news services trying to fill the gaps in Chicago, here's the first honoree:

"Megan Cottrell, 26, a former dancer who started last year as a volunteer, is now a full-time staffer assigned to the Chicago Housing Authority. "They despise me," she says. But spokesman Matthew Aguilar says Cottrell has mostly been fair -- and that the Tribune and Sun-Times no longer cover the authority regularly."

Honey, if they hate you, you're doing it right. They can Kiss Your Happy Heinie!

The site is funded by a foundation, which I'm not so sure about. There are Conrad Black types in foundations, too. And Rupert Murdoch types. And unfortunately, this graf is also true: "WMAQ-TV's Carol Marin, a Sun-Times columnist, says sites such as Chitown do "a good job" but don't have the resources to "push back against the powerful." The Sun-Times is helping her fight a subpoena to testify at mob-related trial. "One of the things lost in the stripped-down blogosphere is the ability to fight for your stories," Marin says."

Second, tho MacArthur might get to him first: Ari Roth of Theatre J for staging the readings and discussions of Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children. Some people can open the mind and the mouth and give people a safe place to work out these complex issues, without denying any of their complexity. Heart, balls and everything in between--and people who blast off protests and view any "side" as absolutely faultless can Kiss His Happy Heinie!

The third, in the science category, goes to my Hot Friend E, so she can develop her health-promoting-cum-conceptual-art project, the Hydration Bra. It's a combination pushup bra and Camelback water jugs. You fill the cups with water in the morning, and sip through the tube throughout the day. People could tell by your boob size whether you have been drinking enough water that day, and call your attention to it, so you'll stay hydrated. And everyone would want to attend the morning meetings, right?

By the way, feel free to send a virtual donation. It's tax deductible in my dreams.

Say My Name, Um, I Mean, Say Your Name

Got another one last night.

Writing Erotica

A tongue otherwise occupied can't tell tales.
Twin hungers: To touch or to hover,
Framing the picture. I'm not above
Taking notes. Sometimes the inclinations tangle:
Which do I obey? To the two sides of
Every story, the moment or the memory,
It's not just a time-honored device but inevitable
To add a third. Always a welcome arrival.
Could I give her your name?
The reader, the witness, flows into her own
Pleasure and writes herself
Out of that moment. So it sways,
What is, what is told, cup to cup,
And not a drop is lost but to the air,
And that becomes the rain
And fills the cup again.

Don't imagine there's no technique involved.
The honest construction of momentum,
Obstacle, delay, completion, enlivened
By the immediacy of remembered detail.
But you have to start somewhere. Like they say,
Write what you know.

Jacob, a man of experience, wrestled
The Angel of creative power, on and on,
For hours and hours. A man I know of painted
The scene of that struggle, and ran away--
On another island, he lived to fight another day.

In Like a Lion

I guess eventually I'll write one to go with all of them, major and minor arcana.

The Judgment Card

Why, you! And here I thought you
were dead. Across a crowded room,
What's new, probably she was bored,
All that. There's nothing like a glimpse
Between the gilded pillars, between the stems
Of those huge exotic blooms, the pricey trumpet
Lilies of the kind I didn't think we'd see again.
Nor those rich robes, so fresh. I see them
Swirl around her ankles as the chains fall away.
Oh roar away, and clash a cymbal or so.
What I'm listening for is her breath,
Filtered through nicotine, drawing down,
(She breathes his need, you know. No blood
For that vamp. All it takes is a whisper
Of despair, and she's there!) Oh blow;
The lion, the lamb, the lily, the rose,
The stage, all set; the revelation, yes,
And the wings, poised to lift
Those who lie to new life.

Pardon Me, Boy

I hate the Connecticut coach. He ought to go work for AIG. Go Chattanooga.

Wash, FSU, Gonzaga with a z, Louisville.

UPDATE: Christopher Walken's Twitter!

Your Weekly World News

This is a partial list of the people on this earth who, I believe, were/are actually space aliens or beings from some alternate universe. Feel free to add your votes.

Oscar Wilde
Harriet Tubman
George Washington
Sappho
Isadora Duncan

I got to thinking about Wilde because of St. Patrick's Day. As my one allowable prejudice, I have taught my daughter this nationalistic, jingoistic, party line: The Irish are the greatest writers in the whole world.

The Miley Cyrus/Radiohead "feud" may make my daughter's head explode. She likes both. So do I. I listened to "Pyramid Song" in labor.

A guy I know reported that Miley was wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt during a show setup, and people threw down all over his Facebook comments, disrespecting her, saying how dare she, she couldn't really like Sonic Youth! My take: If Thurston Moore can like Karen Carpenter, why can't Miley Cyrus like Thurston Moore? I'm gonna get even more Camille Paglia here and start going into how Miley Cyrus plays adolescent female identity politics--Hannah can be sharp and sexy and mysterious, while Miley must be goofy and gangly; Hannah can drive, Miley must walk; Hannah is independent and talented, Miley gets a family and friends...it's a training ground for how a woman must segment herself according to assigned roles, right?

Look. Miley Cyrus is not allowed to fail, to be a loser, to recognize ambiguity or subtlety in any form; she is forbidden to deal with anger, loss or pain in her music; she cannot rail, she cannot scream, she cannot be a feminist, she cannot have a sexual identity of any kind or she will risk her own and her family's livelihood, she will disappoint everyone. She is a factory, a CEO, a religious devotee in her terribly, frighteningly restricted life and stunted art.

Thom Yorke, please, she has so very little in her life. You could be kind.

UPDATE: There are all sorts of flashing police lights outside my window as I write this. DH gets home with the news: Someone has left an "unidentified case" outside of Fannie Mae. Somebody's scared somebody's letting that Populist Outrage get the better of them, hmm?

Photo: Poets' Graves.

Madoff Trial Over; The Trial of Maria P. Continues

A gaggle of some thousands of MBAs R Us trip in, steps ahead of the peasants with the torches.

"Can you tell us what to say so they'll give us the rest of their money?"

"They don't have any money."

"They can borrow it, and then give it to us. Write something we can tell them to make them do it."

"I don't know if I can."

"If you don't, I'll tell my daddy to tell your boss to fire you, bitch," hisses one.

They chain me to the computer with the straps of their big ugly handbags, worth more than I have made in months, and tape a health insurance card to the screen, for motivation. Because they understand employee compensation. They know what motivates and sustains employee efforts.

"What do you do for people?" I ask. A young master pauses in his labors of mixing a pitcher of sweet, fruit-flavored cocktails long enough to suck in his gut and snort in my direction.

"What do you mean?" another asks.

"People won't give you money unless you can show you can do something for them," I gasp, trying to sit up. "I don't know what to write. I need something to go on."

"We don't have to DO anything," one says.

"We analyze the environment and shape action-oriented strategies that get results!" one crows.

"We deliver solutions! We're comprehensively solutions-focused!" roars another.

"But what do you do?" I ask. "What do you do for the money?"

"We deserve it!" another snips. "We're smarter than you! We're smarter than anyone! We're the smartest ones in the room!"

"What do you make, what do you give, what do you do--" One shoves his tie into my mouth to silence me. I notice it's a knockoff.

A woman begins, with the tip of her perfectly manicured index fingernail, to carve into my skin my health insurance group number. A man joins her, carving with a sharpened key to his Lexus. They etch the number, over and over, deeper and deeper, into my flesh. They get results.

Photo: From Greenaway's Pillow Book; a more pleasant prospect.

Mix Tape

I can't stop listening to the radio, even on days like this, when I hit the buttons and get Kansas, Eagles, T-Pain, Rascal Flats, NPR Airbag. Mrat. The best station in the city is WHUR, but as much as I like Michael Baisden, I wish they had more locals on, and sometimes I'm just not up for all that Quiet Storming. Internet radio is a touch better. DH usually has KCRW all around the house, but when I get up early to make the pancakes, I turn to the Technicolor Web of Sound psychedelia, which even replays ads from the old days (Cream doing a beer ad, speed kills, etc.). And of course I enjoy DJ Booger X, Tuesday nights 7-10--who doesn't?

But when you go back, way back, back to the time of Bertha Butt and the Butt Sisters...there was Radio Mitch, which was actually a series of cassette tapes, mix tapes, that he made just for a small army of acquaintances. I don't even remember how many there were, but BA found an old one and put it on a CD for me and I've been listening to the first two songs on it ever since. That's because it comes out as all one track, so I have to keep going back to the beginning, because I don't even want to go past the second song, because it is ELEKTRA by THE REIVERS, and I really, really, really used to love that song.

Except I can't remember where or when.

I know it. I know the words, I know the bassline--maybe I learned it once? But I don't remember where or how or when I heard it, when I must have heard it over and over. The years from 1976 to 1990 have two things in common--I own blurred memories and I didn't own a television. At some points I didn't have a stereo or even a radio, sometimes just an AM one in the car (used to love WOL), sometimes just a little portable picnic player, as Alex would call it, to play cassettes. A lot of people (save for BA, who bailed me out a couple times; I ever win Powerball, she gets half) don't get how poor I was then and how crazy the work was. The work + school together later was tough, but the starting out work the first time I left school was the worst. Whenever I think about getting laid off I get flashbacks to the employment office woman telling me I had to wear more makeup and cut my hair and dress more professionally, and there I was sitting in the new black suit, $40 from Dress Barn, $40 of rent money, and that sweet, sweet saleswoman who said so reassuringly that "black worsted goes with everything, it's so versatile." Shoulder pads. Me wearing it with the thrift store blouses. Trying to stretch out birth control pills over a day and a half because I couldn't afford them, and getting pregnant, and the car breaking down, and hitching to work, and the miscarriage, the bad one that landed me in the hospital, and my parents coldly and angrily bailing me out, and, as I recovered, my mother taking me for a haircut.

One's tempted to despise the 80s, but they gave us Joan Didion's The Last Thing He Wanted, which I dipped into the other night to find a description of the Omni Mall in Miami, which I used to live next door to, in the late 90s when it was long past its glory, and got stuck in--the book, I mean, not the mall, but sometimes in that haunted castle built on powder, too. Check this out: "It is hard now to call up the particular luridity of 1984." And: "I see now that there will be no Resolution Trust to do the workout on this particular default, but I did not see it then. Not that I shouldn't have. There were hints all along, clues we should have processed, sifted for their application to the general condition. Try the day we noticed that the banks had called in the paper on all the malls, try the day we noticed that somebody had called in the paper on all the banks..."

It's scary. It's about reconstructing a version of events. Out of the odd details you can remember clearly.

But goddamn, what a great song. "From sober....to sultry....I got you on my mind, in all soft-talking time..." Why do I know it? Did I use that phrase in a headline? "Sober, to sultry." Did someone make me a mix tape called that? Did I make someone a mix tape and call it that? Will I regret asking these questions? But I like the song. When I heard it, my heart lifted. Did I lose a good memory?

Image: I used to love that comic, too.

Big Hard Green Globes

With the Miami Herald on the shelf at the Dollar Store and the Sun-Sentinel limboing lower now, it is up to Gourmet magazine to do (excellent) investigative reporting on slavery in Florida's agricultural business. You might avoid certain strawberries as well; the people who pick them are prone to having children with tragic birth defects.

I don't buy out of season, and I try to stick to local. But there are folks, some related to me, who live not far from Immolakee who say that by doing so I am harming farmworkers more, that these people want these jobs, that they're grateful for them. (They say worse things, but I'm not quoting those.) I say, I don't want to enslave and poison people and I'm not grateful to be able to play a part in it, so what about MY needs?

Again the fallacy that the only solutions are those we've experienced, that we can't envision anything new.

It was about this time last year that I forced DH to leave the relations during our vacation and go with me to Lake Okeechobee, because I wanted to see where Zora Neale Hurston had written about and I wanted to hike part of the levee around the lake. Despite some health problems at the time, I found some beauty there: strange birds, long flat stretches of swamp, dragonflies mating in mid-air. But the lake bottom is riddled with arsenic; in drought, it catches on fire; in floods, it fills with farm runoff and massive fish kills follow.

ON ANOTHER topic...

This is in honor of Nathaniel Mayweather's impending nuptials. Yay, Fancy Lad! We like seeing you so happy. (You HAVE TO watch at least until the "grab the butt" part.)

I didn't write for a while because I was in a killer depression. Then I heard yesterday a "this day in rock history" item about Janis Joplin being fined for obscene language onstage in Tampa, and I thought, bitch, the least you can do in her honor is get out of bed and go use some obscene language. On whatever stage you can find.

Chapter XXIII: In Which I Join a Badass Gang

I am wearing a bandana for the next few days. DD saw me in it and said: "It looks like you've been working very hard, mama." I have this genetic thing where I grow lumps on my head, and every 10 years or so I have to get them cut off. Ewwwwww I know, it's totally Alien. Or the karmic retribution for working in advertising. So the removal process today was a little complicated, and now I have a small bald spot and blue stitches and just yuckkiness on the top of my head. And the only thing I can think to do is wear a cotton bandana, because at least that's clean and breathable. Luckily, I have plenty, from running. I have purple, teal, turquoise and pirate. What does that say about my sexual preferences, I wonder?

On another note. Sad news. Much like what happened to my brother-in-law, about 8 years ago now.

"In An Interstellar Burst I Am Back to Save the Universe"

I was Jonesing furiously to hear "Airbag" and couldn't find OK Computer anywhere, so DH downloaded it for me, kind man, and I over-and-overed it all the way to Annapolis and back, and between that and the trees and being reminded of Vanity Fair, and also that movie The Object of Beauty, when Malkovich was sexy, I came up with this.

And I certainly have been something of an airbag lately.

A Sharp Retort
I agree it's a cheap way to pass the time,
But how can I feel sexy when I'm not liquid?
Maybe if we were living like outlaws again--
Now that's a life to get you pumping,
Go in and out the windows, that keeps you young.
But not these dull duns on the front stoop, please;
Not living like palace fleas, feeding on the fringes
There's got to be someone out there for whom
A glance is as good as a promise--
Oh debt, where is my stain?

Jai Homo-Loving Son of a Gun

Was it the long run, or the salmon with rice noodles I made? We dozed through yet another awards show, on a pile of newspapers.

DH: Penelope Cruz should get it because she's so hot.
Me: Daniel Craig keeps getting all mixed up.
DH: Natalie Portman. Smokin hot.
Me: Yeah, but they're going to feel bad about this whole Joaquin Phoenix thing when it turns out he's suffering from undiagnosed mercury poisoning.
DH: Tina Fey. Preeeetttttyy!
Me: Yeah, but she's anti-stripper, so I'm not so crazy about that.
DH: I love Melissa Leo.
Me: (As Joel Gray addresses Sean Penn): Great, have the gay guy talk to the gay guy.
Me: (As Christopher Walken addresses the guy from Revolutionary Road): Great, have the crazy guy talk to the crazy guy.
Me: (As Cuba Gooding Jr talks to Robert Downey Jr): Great, have the Junior talk to the Junior. Or maybe, um, oh.

UPDATE, really important update: How could I forget, John Legend. Nutmeg. Nutmeg. Mmmm, nutmeg.

"Doesn't Anybody Notice That Our Knuckles Are Turning Blue?"

Even though it was my business to do so for some years, I never gave a shit about the Oscars or any of those other awards shows. Tonight, I'm looking forward to the Oscars. Why? Seeking cheap escape, that's why. I'm like one of those Depression-era women clutching her nickels to buy a ticket to go see that "My Forgotten Man" number one more time.

The New Yorker rundown is the only one telling the truth about the sorry nominees this year.

Speaking of telling the truth, YOU HAVE TO read this. That's a joke around the Cougar household, because certain relatives are a little on the controlling side, constantly telling me I HAVE TO go to an expensive restaurant or resort or watch this year's pretentious hit show or similar thing I don't want to do and can't afford. (All I ever want to do is groove, lie in bed, and write poetry, fuckers.)

Unfortunately, the full essay is available only by subscription. The free bloggers on this guy's site are tearing it up, on topics ranging from the dangers of space junk to investigative reporting on Navy testing off the Oregon coast, and you can read them for free, but there's a big chunk of prose you get only through subscription. I can't believe I'm shilling for this dude, AGAIN, since I've got my differences with him on several levels, but this taste will maybe show why reading this just made me jump up and walk around the room. Yeah, it's ironic, the not-buying-it woman saying pay for this, but I do buy art, books (carefully), I do still buy the privilege of seeing performance.

It's been years since I got screamingly sick of being told I was supposed to help the world by spending money I don't have on crap I don't need; similar time frame for being disgusted at myself for working in advertising (even for nonprofits). But I'm also very trapped; there are certain things I've signed up for and can't creep out of now. I've been clearing little honest and adventurous and true spaces for myself around the corners, just through being crafty and creative, but it takes such an enormous amount of energy. It's like I've been staying up late and using odd hours when no one is watching to dig an escape tunnel out of a prison, and now I wonder how many people are going to show up wanting to use it, and they're all welcome, but here I am not even knowing if it goes anywhere.

And I'm claustrophobic. But all I can do is keep digging.

Anyway, here's the Eric Francis that you HAVE TO read:

"Yet what is really driving all this consumer debt? Is it the need to conform? Are we covering some deep insecurity? Are we consuming because we have issues about our ability to create? A consumer-based economy is clearly the result of the feeling that we're not creative people. Compared to vacations in the Bahamas, art supplies and musical instruments are cheap. Most of what we consume either has nothing to do with creating; or it could, if we applied the imagination to make it so. But that takes, well, imagination, and the boldness to use it. Learning to play the guitar takes practice.

Yet as most creative people will tell you, it's difficult to make a living based on what you make. Most of us don't actually purchase the work of craftspeople, artisans or artists; we purchase manufactured items -- and all artists know it because most of us have to do something else to put food on the table. And often when art is purchased, it is done as an investment by the purchaser rather than for its own sake. The value goes up when the artist dies. I jokingly tell talented young artists not to accept payment in heroin. I learned this from an art dealer.

"...Besides showing up as sex-phobia, our emotional problems are congealing around money and specifically debt. Americans consume mindlessly, and it long ago turned into a full-blown habit. Admittedly, we are pushed to consume on a nonstop basis by the most expensive educational campaign in history -- advertising.

Addiction is an inappropriate response to an emotional issue, and it is often hidden from view (veiled, like the 8th house). We have accessed debt at unimaginable amounts to finance this addiction. As a culture, we utilize our brainpower to rationalize our behavior rather than use it to recognize and define the problems underlying our addiction; or to turn our energy toward creation. The act of thinking has been co-opted in the service of our addictions. We feed our imagination titillation and fantasy to the point of total distraction. We shun the use of our creativity for problem solving, for pleasure, for beauty.

Why do we do this? Here are some questions we might ponder, provided this week by my friend Kelly after she looked at the chart:

-- What are the emotional issues that are underlying our addiction? What are we avoiding? Why is any loss so difficult to deal with?

-- What price are we willing to pay before we recognize that emotional processing should be part of our daily rituals, just like brushing our teeth, or eating? It is part of the maintenance of living.

-- Why are we holding onto our paradigm of reality even when it is clear to any rational being that it is self-destructing? Doesn't anybody notice that our knuckles are turning blue?"

Photo: Despair.com, telling the truth about business and getting ripped off for a decade.

Falling Rock

My hearing is getting so bad that the only time I can listen to music is when I'm alone in the car. I can't really hear it unless it's at high volume. (It's not from listening to too much loud music, by the way. It's called Meniere's disease. Probably didn't spell it right.)

At home, my daughter or the neighbors complain. So last weekend I'm driving DH and DD up around mountain roads because my Hot Friend E offered us a couple beds in a ski place she rented for her family. And DH has got the weird iPod thing working where he plugs it into a cassette tape and then it plays through the speakers. He usually plays random stuff and most of the time I'm all, ohhhh, please can we turn it off and put on an Elvis Mitchell podcast. And he's playing random stuff and we have this conversation.

Me: I kind of like that song. Who is it?
DH: It's called LCD Soundsystem.
Me: It sounds old. I like it.
DH: I think it's a Joy Division cover.
Me: That doesn't sound like Joy Division. I don't know that one. But maybe my hearing's just so bad I don't recognize it. It sounds too happy.
DH: Happy? He's saying everything falls apart and you think that's happy?
Me: I thought he was saying "It's going to start." Can I turn it up?
DD: (from carseat in back): Will you please turn down the music? I can't sing when it's too loud.
Me: It could be falling apart in a happy way.
(Same song starts playing again, but it sounds a little different.)
Me: What, does this band just do one song over and over?
DH: No, I think this is John Cale singing it.
Me: But it's the same band? Who is this band this time?
DH: They. Are. Called. L. C. D. Sound. System.
Me: So they're the same and they're doing one song. Why do they do the same song?
[pause]
Me: Don't make fun of me for going deaf. Is it like a tribute?
DH: I think there is a Joy Division tribute album, but it's not this one.
Me: I know there is a Joy Division tribute album. It sucks. I mean, are they like a Joy Division tribute band, like Lez Zepplin? Wow, that would be cool, a lesbian Joy Division tribute band. What would they call it?
DH: It's the same band.
Me: (Thinking: Ha ha! Black Lab! They could call it Black Lab!) This is cool, because the first time I heard Joy Division it was on this cassette tape? And I was listening to it going to the prison up by Antietam to visit this guy. And it was weather like this, all gloomy.
DH: Who were you visiting in prison?
Me: He was a friend of my friend MR, you remember her? I knew him from being around, you know, but she wanted to visit and bring him some stuff, like sweats and stuff, a bible, you know. He got all born again in there. He wasn't violent or anything, just (mouths, because of daughter) *drugs*. But she was out west, so she couldn't go see him, so I went instead.
[Pause]
Me: This is a different song now. What is he singing? "Going around the bend--in Africa?"
DH: "If you do it again, I'm gonna freak out."
[Pause]
DH: "So do it again."

So, did you guess the song? It's "All My Friends," and it's NOT a Joy Division cover. LCD Soundsystem does, however, cover No Love Lost, an obscurity from the days when Joy Division was called Warsaw. So maybe my hearing's not so terrible after all.

Repurposed

Some co-conspirators on That Wretched Facebook thing are doing lists of favorite covers. Here, with just a few recycled bits, is my list of favorite covers that will never happen.

Barry White, "Theme from The Beverly Hillbillies"
Cass Elliot, "Hate On Me"
Marc Bolan, "Baby I'm-a Want You"
Freddie Mercury, "Evenflo"
Jim Morrison, "Ride Like the Wind"
Bob Marley, "Renegade"
Kurt Cobain, "Hit Me Baby One More Time"
Robert Palmer, "Think Before He Cheats"

Please add as inspiration strikes.

Layoffs have gotten closer. It's not right to say anything more specific, even here; I'm safe for now, but infuriated. Trying to detach. I mean, when you come down to it, what did you expect? Why does it come to such a surprise to us that we're worthless and disposable in this system?

But that's only in this system. In what realm are we precious and prized, and why can't we arrange for that one to be our consensual reality?

The door is always open wide...

Get Ready for the Judgment Day

"If you don't feel looming dread, you're not very bright." That's what Edward Albee is quoted as saying in the Post, and it's good enough for me. However, I woke up this morning inexplicably happy. Here are some happy things for you.

--The movie's horrifying, I understand, but I like this trailer because it kills on cliches, and plus, the dancing kilt guy. Some people say it's a feminist affront; I disagree--well, maybe the movie is, but the trailer, no, because a dumbass cliche is a dumbass cliche, whether it's girly or not.

--Not since encountering the incisive work of rock critic Ronald Thomas Clontle have I been so impressed by such an omnibus, a panorama, of rock history. This cavalcade rules.

--One of my friends has threatened to act this out at the next PTA meeting.

--How could I have forgotten this???

UPDATE: My bad, my bad: Bad link on Tres Chicas the other day. Good link on Tres Chicas.

The Grammies Wuz Trippin

And I was falling into a dream
Over the New York Times magazine...
Little Nick Jonas gets shook up by Wonder
and misses his cue--but his brother knows what to do...
Don't sleep in the subway, Kanye...
Tired eyes and a tight tank top for Kate Winslet,
Looking well in the Chelsea Hotel.
MIA bounces like the bee girl reincarnate
Proud mother of a brood of boasts.
Robert Downey Jr. puts his kadas through the difference engine
and finds the solution. Then Thom leads the samba drums
and shining brass into a Trouble Man for our time--
Et cetera, et cetera, et tu...

You Can't Shoot the Fiddler in the Middle of the Show

Finally got around to opening, reading, and, thanks to a longish drive to and from a witch convention, listening to the two CDs of the Oxford American music issue. You get a lot for your money with that thing, all kinds of short essays of all types, at least one on each tune, plus usually a story, some poems, and a couple of features. The piece on Elton and Betty White, who I am so happy to now know about, had me shouting out bits aloud to DH. Photo of Arthur Lee looking like a bodhisattva (and sad story of his last days). Very very good piece on "Lawson and Four More" that explores the question of where you draw the line on what you call an authentic outsider--a topic this magazine should take on in every last issue, because it's sticky and endemic to southern culture nowadays and certainly to this magazine--through taking apart a piece of music by skilled players that was intentionally produced to "sound garage." It's got a knockout punchline, in that the band evolved into Big Star (and the ethereal "For You" is on the second disk, btw).

But then there are the blaps and tweets, like the dreadfully earnest Peter Guralnick recycling his stuff on Jerry Lee (just listen to the song) and a multi-page pant about Neko Case, in which the author works the conceit of spending a day with the band to the near death of all concerned, even the poor publicists'. It starts with some line about remembering watching a woman licking a strawberry ice-cream cone, and just gets worse; wank, wank, McSweeney-flavored wank for six freaking pages. I sure hope y'all didn't pay this guy by the word.

Too many of the women artists I hear now sound like they've been processed to fit in as the soundtrack to the obligatory emo montage at the end of a network drama--a little acoustic strum, a little trebly warble about staying strong when all feels bleak. Or maybe they're all the same person. And then I think of artists like Lynn Blakey and Lori Carson not getting their due and I'm all like, I'm just going to listen to the Stylistics again. I know it's not a bad thing to have your song on an emo montage, hell, it happened to Joni Mitchell and the cash is not unwelcome, but you know.

So I had little hope for the song itself, even though I'm sure my husband has played me the album it's off before, and plenty of New Pornographers as well. He's always waving the Latest Things under my nose, but my tastes are so particular and peculiar that I can't settle and listen for long; I have no patience unless it knocks me out and forces me into it. I'm sure like many others she's been part of all kinds of cool kids' bands that I haven't bothered checking out, so just STOP, OK? What I'm saying is I like this one song, if that's allowed? And that I had that wonderful experience of having my assumptions trashed?

In the first 30 seconds or so, I'm wondering, did Wanda Jackson ever record with Lee Hazelwood? Same rodeo-rope phrasing, just yelping it out. Showdown and tumbleweed guitar, her own, I hear, and those metaphysical lyrics, with just enough specificity thrown in to be mysterious:

Compared to some, I've been around
But I really tried so hard--
That echo chorus lied to me with its "hold on,
"Hold on hold on hold on..."
In the end I was the mean girl
Or somebody's in-between girl
Now it's the devil that I love.
And it's as funny as real love.
I leave the party at 3 a.m.,
Alone, thank god,
With a valium from the bride.
It's the devil that I love.

I played it over and over, missed my exit, dipped down to cross the Patuxent and looked out at the ice breaking, played it again, and played it again.

Once I got home, DH enthusiastically played me the rest of the album it's off, salivating about a new one she's got coming out, but nothing grabbed me the same way. I'll check out her second, which is supposed to be more country.

So there's MY wank. And they say women take longer. To its credit, OxAm also has a shorter piece on Case by Greil Marcus, call it a wan. The best of his take on "Hold On Hold On"--"driving fast around the turns." Maybe we all shoulda just left it at that.

And I'm rooting for Anthony Hamilton in the Grammies.

Photo: Was delighted to find one of her with guitar instead of just looking fetching, but lord, read that cover line, oh you poor thing to have to listen to that kind of drivel all the livelong day. Does put one in mind of Yates' "It's certain that fine women eat a crazy salad with their meat."

Headline: It's got a good Clarence Gatemouth Brown song on it, too. No fiddle players were harmed during this production.

PIA

My arm hurts too much to write (beyond 8 billable hours required to get paid). Resting for a couple more days. Scared cosmos is saying you must never write anything fun again.

Ice Ice Baby

Sweater Weather
A community of chatterers says "Don't--
"Don't--Don't you deserve a rest?"
They counsel: "Listen to small pains
Now, they're harbingers, a twinge, a throb
A bulletin, if only I had known,
If only I had seen, had stopped,
It's not too late for you
To change your course--"

So I retreat to the sheets, but I don't
Stew there, they're sweet with soap scent
Still. I'll look back on this king-size
Mattress as one of the last luxuries
Before the fall. I can only take
So much dreaming, and force myself
Down that road again, squeeze out drops
Of salty ice, breathe smoke, curse the slip
That comes between my feet and the earth.

We're all bundled now against anyone
Detecting our true shapes. I squint
Against the cold and try to make you out.
Maybe my hands, gloved or numb,
Could feel your form, somewhere between
The coats and the blankets, the layers of fleece.

In a season of sweaters--
It's an old joke--but
Would you hold it against me
To crave warm skin?

That's about trying to run in winter, when everyone says tsk at your age you're courting knee replacement, you've already put your eye out and you don't even realize it yet, and also about petting a cat curled up on a pile of coats on a bed.

Anyway, two wonderful things I know: After several tests, the breast bump is benign, as I knew it would be, and I am still dead set against the overuse of sophisticated diagnostics when genetic evidence doesn't warrant it. But we'll never get (efficient and ultimately less costly) individualized medicine unless we have a system that's not tied to job or other similar factors for health insurance; the potential for genetic discrimination is too high.

And John wrote a great poem on here, check the comments under Jan. 22; I like to think of it resting there for those adventurous enough to discover it.

It's Always About Jobs

Whole lot of flapjack over New York Times Magazine article on What Women Want (in Bed). As Jezebel puts it, what women appear to want most is to talk about what women want.

It was pretty funny Sunday morning, when I was curled up in a corner in the waiting area at my daughter's karate class, plowing through my pile of newspapers as the children battled, and one of the karate dads came over to borrow a section or two, as he sometimes does. While my eyes were scanning the Book Review, I did catch a glimpse of his hand reaching out to pick up the Magazine, then pulling back quickly from the flaming cover illustration and going instead for Sunday Business. Keeping it safe.

I admire the researchers' work, and it's certainly important, but I don't know--there's so much variation in our anatomy, much more in our brains. Can you really pin down what makes ALL women feel hot? The article does make a few good points: Arousal is not consent (which should be printed on beer bottles). That women do not necessarily "need" "intimacy" and "romance" to enjoy sex. And that "making the relationship better" and "talking more about your feelings" are not always the route to better sex.

Sometimes it can be a good idea to just shut up.

I'm off to watch the second installment of Masterpiece Theater's Wuthering Heights. Talk about your eye candy. Ruins Emily's prose, but I am liking that Heathcliff.

Oh, and the answer is: freedom and worship.

(Oh, and the insurance industry is the next up for a crash, and something like 30,000 jobs lost today? I take it back, we can talk about sex, please, can we just talk about sex instead?)

"Hello, Mr. Soul, I Dropped By to Pick Up a Reason"

Yogi Tea, make up your fucking mind, come on, I pull up one chamomile teabag and the fortune-cookie like paper tag on the teabag says "The soul is projection. Represent it." Oh, yo yo yo, yogi tea, representin' all up in the house, what the hell is that supposed to mean, anyway? If it's projection, why would I want to represent a projection, if such a thing were even possible, I mean it's like a movie of a movie, right? So the next teabag says "The soul is the highest self" and I'm all, OK, which is it? WHICH IS IT? I need to know, because I'm in a haze of "flu-like symptoms" and I don't even like chamomile, and speaking of representational, I look in the mirror and I see something by Lucian Freud, or fuck, by Francis Bacon and I feel every minute of my years.

I hate Yogi Tea, but I love my new Friday yoga teacher. She plays Tom Waits during class.

The Day's Sharp Sparkle

If all you know of Elizabeth Alexander's poems is the Inaugural reading, you're in for some good stuff when you go to her website. Reviews were mixed, but I liked the ambition of applying the praisesong form to everyone in America. I think I caught a contrast between the language of sharpness, thorn, glitter--the established edifices, the old guard--and the smoother sounds speaking of the rest of us, the everyday, the underneath.

I had seen her Hotentot Venus poems, but I didn't know some of the others, like this long poem all about what happens after you give birth. This is just one little chunk, not the most lyrical and it suffers a little out of context, but one that will make you shake your head in recognition, from the longer Neonatology, on her website.

I think the baby needs to eat. The baby’s hungry.
Look! He’s making sucking noises. Look!
His fist is in his mouth.
Why does the baby sleep all day? How
does the baby sleep at night? Three feedings? Huhn.
You need to let that baby cry.
You need to pick that baby up.
You need to put that baby down.
Kiss the baby too much, he’ll get heartburn.
What are those bumps on the baby’s face?
Why is the baby crying so?
That baby needs to eat, and now.

I found I rediscovered simplicity in language from spending so much time with my own baby. I got back rhythms and short lines. Metaphors and analogies had to simplify, too, as she got older, to explain things to her limited experience. Nature came back to me as a metaphor and teacher, because we spent a lot of time outside, that is, when we weren't hiding from snipers and "terrorists." It makes sense that birth makes you think of death; she briefly writes a parallel to her baby in her womb and a person in the hold of ship; I get stuck in the airport security line and think of boxcars. I know my own poetry can only suffer in comparison on the page, but this is what I mean--it's a piece out of a poem called TSA.

At security, they make me sip the breast milk
From the plastic baby bottle
To prove it’s not poison.
I don’t say anything.
I know better than that.
Do what they say and don’t say
Anything. They can do anything
They want. Don’t ask. Don’t try
To tell them anything. I smile—
Not too wide—and nod, even though
I can’t hear them very well. What if
I can’t understand what they want me to do?
What if they can hear
The hysteric babble in my mind, now
Rising in my throat? Yes, it’s true,
I want to say,
It’s true this is breast milk,
But it’s dangerous, so dangerous,
I shouldn’t have it here.
They tell me it’s full of my body’s toxins,
They tell me the bottle is leaching poison,
They say there’s plastic inside of me
And the plastic’s gonna get her, too.

Plastic in the water, plastic in the bottle,
Plastic in the mommy, plastic in the baby,
Plastic in your nose, plastic in your toes,
Plastic in the seeds, plastic in the root
Plastic in the stones at the bottom of the river
Plastic, plastic, in the air, plastic, plastic everywhere!
Ma’am! Ma’am! Ma’am! Ma’am!
Please keep moving! Move on through!

Nutritious and Delicious

I'm a member of the DAR. My mother put me in it. She's one too. It's not like I asked for it or ever do anything with it; it's just sort of there, creeping me out. And it doesn't get me discount tickets to Constitution Hall. I've seen some good shows there--Laurie Anderson, Black Crowes, Mary J. Blige. But it still creeps me out.

Bundled up the baby girl and took her down to the Jefferson for the witches' broom dance and to hear Caroline Casey speak. Blew me away as usual; one quick riff was on how Dick Chaney is allergic to pomegranates and we should envision him surrounded by pomegranates. I can see/feel it, all the vivid red bursting seeds bubbling around him and him thrashing, his thin lips stretched and screaming in horror at being surrounded by all that life, all that juice, all that healthy sexy fruity goodness.

A long walk back to the Metro, but DD is a trouper. DIY vendors had set up shop on all corners, about 10 per jumbotron screen. The screens were broadcasting the Lincoln concert again. People were walk/dancing around the memorial throwing their hands up to "Shout." Black people were doing that, to Garth Brooks. My goodness. I got a t-shirt for Favorite Cousin, but even though I wanted an Obama family tote bag, I'm not buying anything for me this year. My friend BAker got me an Obama lighter Friday, so I'm a happy girl.

Everyone wants a piece of something from these days; so many people love this next president and his family and everything about him. People want to sing for him, work for him, paint pictures of him. It's such an astonishing energy to be surrounded with, after that eight-year case of food poisoning. It's as luxurious as swimming in pomegranate juice.

Look Upon My Works, Ye Mighty, And Despair

Rick Warren's just another hick Amway salesman. The Christian churches are full of these dweebs--they make nothing, invent nothing, generate nothing to help any economy but their own; they do not sow, nor do they reap; they just build pyramids like any ego-driven pharaoh. But theirs are based on air--you don't even get a bottle of detergent for your trouble.

The New Age world and PaganLand have their share of charlatans, but they are fewer, less powerful, and often they actually have to work for a living in addition to plying their woowoo wares. And one at least gets some perspective and insight from many of them--not the recycled Dale Carnegie Warren has built his bestseller and speaking engagement empire out of (and probably the most diligent form of recycling this vaunted "environmentalist" has ever done).

It was hilarious to me that Warren boasted of "giving donuts" to the gay protesters outside his church. That's just so wrong. Gay men don't eat donuts, and the lesbians have so many ethical food issues and obscure allergies that they can't eat them either. (Awww, don't hate me for making fun--I'm just one of those poor bicoastal creatures who just can't make up their minds, remember?)

It's not so hilarious that he sold a shred of integrity to the Syrians in exchange for a photo op on the road to Damascus. Bleh!

Warren's "place at the table" in the Inaugural ceremony could be an indication of how easily Obama is able to be conned, could be a cynical move, or maybe, just maybe, it will show a hateful egoist how real grownups at the big table are capable of behaving toward each other in a civil society. See? Let the Jews and Gays, whom you have proclaimed will not get into heaven, show you how it's done.

Whatever, I'm hoping to be at the table with the witches Monday, making magic for all of y'all.

Feeding the Head that Bites You

A story about people being impoverished by "healthcare costs" flared up in a major newspaper today, but why bother saying which one? It's not like it's their story or anything. It was done in "collaboration" with Kaiser Health News, a new nonprofit media foundation. The vogue thing to say nowadays is that nonprofit foundations will take over as mainstream media (newspapers) die (without health insurance for the people who lose their jobs). So I hope you like your news being brought to you directly by corporations whose mission statements proclaim they have a stake in "shaping" certain issues. Just because they're nonprofit doesn't make them holy.

At the same time, without this foundation, there would be no story at all.

I just don't like a single part of it.

The story attempts a helpful sidebar on keeping down Your Healthcare Costs, but I don't think it helps much, so I wrote my own:

1. Even though the only food you can afford is subsidized corn syrup pressed into traditional dinner-shape servings and we want you to work 18 hours a day, don't get fat.
2. Don't get diabetes, either.
3. Don't get cancer or asbestos poisoning or injured from lifting my garbage cans, day after day after day past the age of 50.
4. Fight my wars, but don't get wounded.
5. And a special note for the ladies: Don't have children, don't have sex, don't use birth control, and don't get abortions. If you do have children, don't let there be anything, you know, "wrong" with them, mmmK?
6. Never, ever skip paying a health insurance premium--how else am I going to afford my boob job, bitch?

Simple, reasonable measures lead to reasonable savings for all!

The other supposed savior of the fourth estate is online discourse, a paradise of trolls and mental dwarves laboring in the darkness. Today, they filled the comments field on this story, telling people with cancer and heart disease that they should stop being fat illegal immigrants and just get over it. (Even though no immigrants of any kind were harmed in the production of Kaiser's story, the trolls just had to bring that issue to the party anyhow.) I'm like, Jesus, there are so many comments here about a couple of white guys' appearance! So two of the guys featured weigh a few pounds, maybe that's because they haven't been healthy enough or had the cash to hit the gym lately! Is the penalty for being big death, now?

Putting it all in perspective is an escaped troll now "working" at the American Enterprise Institute, who actually gets quoted in the story. He says these people just expect too damn much (like staying alive!) and that their expensive benefits could "preempt the use of resources for other services, such as buying Viagra for the rich fucks at MY foundation, which will soon be placing a story all about the tragic epidemic of limp dicks among right-wing policy analysts in what used to be your city and your nation's newspaper. Pay to play, baby!"

Bardem Bardo

Javier Bardem just puts everything in perspective. When I do that insomniac cable movie oracle thing, he often pops up to set me straight. Usually, I get him in Before Night Falls, writing in a Cuban prison and smuggling his work out in Johnny Depp's ass. There are a lot of reasons that movie's hard to watch, not least that I feel about small enclosed spaces the way Winston Smith feels about rats. When they push Reinaldo Arenas into that solitary box, I have to hit the change channel button for a few minutes, always.

Last night, Bardem showed up in an exquisitely lit muddle called Goya's Ghosts. Goya's in my top five painters (him, Manet, Hokusai, Hans Hoffman, Remedios Varo, if you care) but this thing was just a mess, a half-baked Amadeus redux from Milos Foreman, sad to think. Bardem rocked yet another wacky hairstyle (which I can relate to, since I just got my hair colored REALLY red this go around) as an inquisitor priest turned French revolutionary turned Inquisition victim. Natalie Portman got tortured a lot, again, dag, and Goya went deaf and cringed with tinnitus, which I also could relate to (I'm losing my hearing from Meniere's and actually watched a lot of the movie on mute, because the neighbors have started to complain about the TV being too loud at night).

Not anywhere near the league of Before Night Falls, but still helpful, reminding me of a few home truths:

1) Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
2) Things aren't really That Bad for you, dear.

Finally getting back to where my muscles are humming and feeling happy again.

My daughter declares that she is making a magic potion. "It makes everyone pretty on the inside." She is stirring a plastic container with a handful of beads and sequins inside. I want the first taste.

Photo: A Bruce Weber I stole from Vanity Fair; I freely confess without use of The Question.

A Prayer On Being Made Redundant

I'm going into a year of not buying anything, which of course necessitated buying things. There was a trip to Target for two pairs of running/yoga pants and four pairs of emergency backup underwear. Despite my feelings about "things," I was pleased to see that Champion now has girl-size running skirts, yoga pants, and workout capris, with pink banding and piping. My daughter wanted one and I caved--she always needs pants, since she grows like a weed and every pair becomes capris in two or three months (while we're still taking in the waists). There's still, shockingly, a lot of talk about certain things being "not for girls" or "not wanting to be sporty" among my daughter and her friends, and if it takes a sparkly running skirt to change that thinking, it's OK by me.

Add to the consumer frenzy a couple of bra tops and a clutch of perfume samples from ScentBar--it's a lot easier to survive on a giant jug of Dr. Bronners for a year if you know you've got something good to put on afterward.

Of course I'm seeing all these books I want. I'll have to re-learn how to use the library. The last time I did this was about five years ago, and I was too busy/tired to go anywhere but the children's section of libraries.

A half-dozen signs have been steering me to Elizabeth Hardwick, so I picked up Sleepless Nights again, since that's what I'm having plenty of: "When you travel, your first discovery is that you do not exist."

I wish I were traveling. I have been getting smacked down, stomped on, talked to condescendingly, snidely, evilly, sniffed and snorted at, blown off, oh, it goes on. This world is telling me: Shut up and go away, you silly old woman. In the past few weeks I've seriously considered stopping everything but work, running and gardening, becoming a recluse but for the necessity of work. When you put yourself out there, you get put down; it's the law of averages. My spirits--eeny, meeny, sesameenie--say wait until the full moon. You'll hear something that'll tell you whether that's the way to go.

The Church of England has issued prayers for those who have been laid off as well as those left behind. I wish the Rev. Ike would put out his version.

You've Officially Been Chopped and Screwed

In a hard day spent trolling for business leads, I discover that Wegmans plans to give out free antibiotics, but Busch Gardens has opted to stop giving out free beer.

There's something so wrong about this world. Will you help me fix it?

"We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Us"

Been having nightmares for a week--all set in past newspaper jobs, and I'm being relocated, told to fire people, fired myself, told to rip up sections and redo them in ways I know are wrong. Could use some sleep. Am running despite huffing uphills and cramping on the downslopes and almost sliding on my ass down the rotting timber stairs set into the trail off Connecticut Avenue. Did the Melvin Hazen today; the streams are clear and bubbling up over the stepping stones.

I'm reprinting a long email going around Paganland from Starhawk, the writer and Pagan innovator. This is one of the few commentaries I've seen that gets it. Too often, I listen to the progressive left, and their argument devolves into hate speech and anti-Semitism. As a Jew and a Witch and a pacifist who has lived with both sides, Starhawk grasps that we're all in the same boat. It makes me determined to see whatever I'm denying, whatever I've chosen to relegate to shadow, to the "other side of the boat," because ultimately that's all I can do.

This is probably the only time I'm going to post anything regarding this issue; this goofball blog isn't really the right place, but fact is I plain like her writing, and she is a gardener.

Dear friends,

All day I'’ve been thinking about Gaza, listening to reports on NPR, following the news on the internet when I can spare a moment. I’'ve been thinking about the friends I made there four years ago, and wondering how they are faring, and imagining their terror as the bombs fall on that giant, open-air prison.

The Israeli ambassador speaks movingly of the terror felt by Israeli children as Hamas rockets explode in the night. I agree with him— that no child should have her sleep menaced by rocket fire, or wake in the night fearing death.

But I can'’t help but remember one night on the Rafah border, sleeping in a house close to the line, watching the children dive for cover as bullets thudded into the walls. There was a shell-hole in the back room they liked to jump through into the garden, which at that time still held fruit trees and chickens. Their mother fed me eggs, and their grandmother stuffed oranges into my pockets with the shy pride every gardener shares.

That house is gone, now, along with all of its neighbors. Those children wake in the night, every night of their lives, in terror. I don’'t know if they have survived the hunger, the lack of medical supplies, the bombs. I only know that they are children, too.

I’'ve ridden on busses in Israel. I understand that gnawing fear, the squirrely feeling in the pit or your stomach, how you eye your fellow passengers wondering if any of them are too thick around the middle. Could that portly fellow be wearing a suicide belt, or just too many late-night snacks of hummus? That'’s no way to live.

But I’'ve also walked the pock-marked streets of Rafah, where every house bears the scars of Israeli snipers, where tanks prowled the border every night, where children played in the rubble, sometimes under fire, and this was all four years ago, when things were much, much better there.

And I just don'’t get it. I mean, I get why suicide bombs and homemade rockets that kill innocent civilians are wrong. I just don’'t get why bombs from F16s that kill far more innocent civilians are right. Why a kid from the ghetto who shoots a cop is a criminal, but a pilot who bombs a police station from the air is a hero.

Is it a distance thing? Does the air or the altitude confer a purifying effect? Or is it a matter of scale? Individual murder is vile, but mass murder, carried out by a state as an aspect of national policy, that’'s a fine and noble thing?

I don'’t get how my own people can be doing this. Or rather, I do get it. I am a Jew, by birth and upbringing, born six years after the Holocaust ended, raised on the myth and hope of Israel. The myth goes like this:

“For two thousand years we wandered in exile, homeless and persecuted, nearly destroyed utterly by the Nazis. But out of that suffering was born one good thing--—the homeland that we have come back to, our own land at last, where we can be safe, and proud, and strong.”

That'’s a powerful story, a moving story. There'’s only one problem with it--—it leaves the Palestinians out. It has to leave them out, for if we were to admit that the homeland belonged to another people, well, that spoils the story.

The result is a kind of psychic blind spot where the Palestinians are concerned. If you are truly invested in Israel as the Jewish
homeland, the Jewish state, then you can'’t let the Palestinians be real to you. It'’s like you can’'t really focus on them. Golda Meir said, “The Palestinians, who are they? They don’'t exist.” We hear, “There is no partner for peace,” “There is no one to talk to.”

And so Israel, a modern state with high standards of hygiene, a state rooted in a religion that requires washing your hands before you eat and regular, ritual baths, builds settlements that don’'t bother to construct sewage treatment plants. They just dump raw sewage onto the Palestinian fields across the fence, somewhat like a spaceship ejecting its wastes into the
void. I am truly not making this up—I’ve seen it, smelled it, and it’'s a known though shameful fact. But if the Palestinians aren'’t really real—--who are they? They don'’t exist!-- —then the land they inhabit becomes a kind of void in the psyche, and it isn'’t really real, either. At times, in those border villages, walking the fencelines of settlements, you feel like you have slipped into a science fiction movie, where parallel universes exist in the same space, but in different strands of reality, that never touch.

When I was on the West Bank, during Israeli incursions the Israeli military would often take over a Palestinian house to billet their soldiers. Many times, they would simply lock the family who owned it into one room, and keep them there, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days—--parents, grandparents, kids and all. I’'ve sat with a family, singing to the children while soldiers trashed their house, and I’'ve been detained by a group of soldiers playing cards in the kitchen with a family locked in the
other room. (I got out of that one--—but that'’s another story.)

It’'s a kind of uneasy feeling, having something locked away in a room in your house that you can'’t look at. Ever caught a mouse in a glue trap? And you can’'t bear to watch it suffer, so you leave the room and close the door and don’'t come back until it'’s really, really dead.

Like a horrific fractal, the locked room repeats on different scales. The Israelis have built a wall to lock away the West Bank. And Gaza itself is one huge, locked room. Close the borders, keep food and medical supplies and necessities from getting through, and perhaps they will just quietly fade out of existence and stop spoiling our story.

“All we want is a return to calm,” the Israeli ambassador says. “All we want is peace.”

One way to get peace is to exterminate what threatens you. In fact, that may be the prime directive of the last few thousand years.

But attempts to exterminate pests breed resistance, whether you'’re dealing with insects or bacteria or people. The more insecticides you pour on a field, the more pests you have to deal with—, because insecticides are always more potent at killing the beneficial bugs than the pesky ones.

The harshness, the crackdowns, the border closings, the checkpoints, the assassinations, the incursions, the building of settlements deep into Palestinian territory, all the daily frustrations and humiliations of occupation, have been breeding the conditions for Hamas, or something like it, to thrive. If Israel truly wants peace, there’'s a more subtle, a more intelligent and more effective strategy to pursue than simply trying to kill the enemy and anyone else who happens to be in the vicinity.

It'’s this--—instead of killing what threatens you, feed what you want to grow. Consider in what conditions peace can thrive, and create them, just as you would prepare the bed for the crops you want to plant. Find those among your opponents who also want peace, and support them. Make alliances. Offer your enemies incentives to change, and reward your friends.

Of course, to follow such a strategy, you must actually see and know your enemy. If they are nothing to you but cartoon characters of terrorists, you will not be able to tell one from another, to discern the religious fanatic from the guy muttering under his breath, “F-ing Hammas, they closed the cinema again!”

And you must be willing to give something up. No one gets peace if your basic bargaining position is, “I get everything I want, and you eat my shit.” You might get a temporary victory, but it will never be a peaceful one.

To know and see the enemy, you must let them into the story. They must become real to you, nuanced, distinctive as individuals.

But when we let the Palestinians into the story, it changes. Oh, how painfully it changes! For there is no way to tell a new story, one that includes both peoples of the land, without starting like this:

“In our yearning for a homeland, in our attempts as a threatened and traumatized people to find safety and power, we have done a great wrong to another people, and now we must atone.”

Just try saying it. If you, like me, were raised on that other story, just try this one out. Say it three times. It hurts, yes, but it might also bring a great, liberating sense of relief with it.

And if you'’re not Jewish, if you’'re American, if you'’re white, if you'’re German, if you'’re a thousand other things, really, if you'’re a human being, there’'s probably some version of that story that is true for you.

Out of our own great need and fear and pain, we have often done great harm, and we are called to atone. To atone is to be at one--—to stop drawing a circle that includes our tribe and excludes the other, and start drawing a larger circle that takes everyone in.

How do we atone? Open your eyes. Look into the face of the enemy, and see a human being, flawed, distinct, unique and precious. Stop killing. Start talking. Compost the shit and the rot and feed the olive trees.

Act. Cross the line. There are Israelis who do it all the time, joining with Palestinians on the West Bank to protest the wall, watching at checkpoints, refusing to serve in the occupying army, standing for peace. Thousands have demonstrated this week in Tel Aviv.

There are Palestinians who advocate nonviolent resistance, who have organized their villages to protest the wall, who face tear gas, beatings, arrests, rubber bullets and real bullets to make their stand.

There are internationals who have put themselves on the line--—like the boatload of human rights activists, journalists and doctors on board the Dignity, the ship from the Free Gaza movement that was rammed and fired on by the Israeli navy yesterday as it attempted to reach Gaza with humanitarian aid.

Maybe we can'’t all do that. But we can all write a letter, make a phone call, send an email. We can make the Palestinian people visible to us, and to the world. When we do so, we make a world that is safer for every child.

Please feel free to repost this. In fact, send it to someone you think will disagree with it.
Starhawk

www.starhawk.org

A Tree Is Nice

All these people did was write a poem, and look what happened:
--$50 to Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (membership plus $15 on top)
--$15 to Friends of Roan Mountain (Tennessee, Dave's cause)
--and 10 Euros to Kick It Out, a campaign against racism and homophobia in football (soccer), cause that's where Dave's t-shirt is coming from.

The winner is DaveTree, who is not only a professional poet, but studies tree DNA. It was inevitable. I hope I got the line breaks right. Winner first, rest as I found them:

Note to Trees

Trees, it's almost Thanksgiving
and as promised you're coming
naked--along with all your
relatives hauling acorns beechnuts buckeye
nuts moldy maple wings and such.
Leave them at the door.
Don't start in on gifts to the poor
squirrels and other fluffy rats,
and don't ever lapse into that annual rant after
several glasses of wine, death is
the mother of beauty. Death is a motherfucker.
The place cards are set
yet once more--be on your best
behavior; don't forget who this day is for.


John does his usual start-snarky-then-pull-your-heart-out magic:

"TREES"

I think that I shall never see
A chance to fuck under a tree.

A tree whose branches have caressed
A bodice ripped, revealing breast;

A tree that keeps a secret for more than a day,
And shades us from the sun when clothes fall away;

A tree in whose bark we’d carve our names
Who never chooses sides or blames;

Upon whose roots our flesh has lain;
Intimate with soil and pain.

This willow dream made by fools like me,
It’s close to God, to fuck under a tree.


Amateurzac puts one in mind of Fargo. Tan that hide, my friend!

A Cautionary Tale

The most beautiful tree
I will ever see in my life
Was the mulberry that grew in the backyard
With a thick, powerful trunk;
Broad deep-green leaves for shade
In the 100-degree summers,
Delicious fruit that made
A perfect purple mess in the spring,
Shadows and memories playing year round;
Roots, deep and ancient.
I cried and cried and cried
As it went through the wood-chipper
Screaming with metal and agony
One branch at a time.

Rachel speaks to an eternal paradox:

Every time my hands touch paper I touch a tree,
Sucking up the dark water,
Encasing space
Felled, stripped and pulped
Stretched out before me your white corpse
Shaved into thin sheaves
Waits for new born words

Mark is full of brotherly love, despite everything:

The trees around Philly
reach and find only me
their fingers have fallen
their digits have stopped
adding
i smile as i read
and i know she is getting better
with her poetry
it is exciting to witness growth
as so much around me withers...
she was here and she was as still
as i
the trees around here
cover only me.


Rionn Fears Malechem (hmmm) wrote two, at my demand:
Trees are strong, and trees are fun
Trees get bigger in the sun
If I could climb a tree and sit
I'd get right back down, in a bit.

AND

On reaching out, I pause
rather like a tree
paused, reached out
If I had bark I'd be its double,
Although less certain of purpose

Liz moved deftly from the universal to the particular and back again...

Debating between quitting
or screwing off so thoroughly
that my boss has no choice
reminiscing about my own
American Girl Dolls.
One, Molly, a family tradition
One, Addy, my own savings
led to my grandmother's dismay
remember when there were only 3?
From 8 stories up
the trees of Takoma do their autumn trick
for my enjoyment and distraction.
memory, dolls, trees and motivation...
something's gotta give!

Thank you from the bottom of my roots. The contest will return next year, if I have anything to say about it.