itinerantmuse

My Mafra

2011-07-14T17:25:00.005-04:00

I forgot to mention a few crucial details about Jacinto Lucas Pires’ reading (see Thursday, June 23 entry). That’s what happens when you scribble notes on every random slip and find them much later. Humans’ urge to write throughout history proves that we instinctively know time is not linear, though in most other ways, we act like it is. Jacinto’s observations on writing in general and writing in and about Lisbon:

On understanding why Saramago and other writers of that generation preferred writing in freehand versus on a keyboard: “I prefer the movement of the arm like I’m painting these poems.”

On a particular kind of longing: “Saudade do futuro.”

On the intentions of his own writing: “Putting big ideas in small stories” and, citing de Lillo, to reach “that place in the head we call the heart.”

Check out his story “L” in excellent English translation (which he read) from his latest collection.

Sat. 6/25. This is one of the perhaps two days where a few of us went off the program schedule. Lisbon was in the grip of the closest thing I’ve personally experienced in Portugal to a heat wave, Mediterranean style of course (i.e. baking daytime temps in the low nineties, with little humidity but the sun making up for it by turning up the wattage)—and four of us, Melissa, Jacob, Marisol and me, sluggish from the previous night’s partying and continued sleep deprivation, missed the big group train to seaside Cascais. Not a problem since all the group apparently did there was walk, no beach time. Melissa had intended anyway to spend the day at her family’s in the Lisbon suburb of Sao Pedro for a poolside BBQ, and, after waiting over an hour for a rail ticket on a queue clotted with beachgoers (to Cascais of course), all the rest of us wanted was pool and cold adult beverages too. We kept ourselves awake on the train ride to S.P. playing the “up her bum” alphabet movie game starring Angelina Jolie (ask Melissa or Jacob about it, because they always won), a diversion we would later tone down to a G rating when we played it poolside with Mel’s 9 year-old cousin.

Brazilian hospitality and conviviality meets Portuguese small town somnolence is one way to describe this lovely, lazy day we spent drinking beer and lemonade, eating barbeque, feijoes, and farofa, drinking homemade wine, playing darts and fusball, and lounging around a 60 degree pool (refreshing) with interesting people and various tabby cats. Another is, to paraphrase Marisol’s Benter’s memorable line, “Beautiful brown people in bikinis the size of wash cloths.” Well, that was really only the men…

Sun. 6/26. OK, so this was the second day some of us went off schedule. Although my cultural consciousness tweaked a little at missing the Jose Saramago themed trip to the Mafra Palace, a humongous Baroque/Neoclassical palace/monastery that is one of Portugal’s prime touristic jewels, I justified it in two ways:

1. I’ve been there before, as a teenager, on a family trip. OK, so I don’t remember much because after a while then all of the country’s Baroque, Neoclassical and Gothic masterpieces started to blur into a general category I now call “Europe,” but, still, I’ve been there. Mafra, in fact was a prime feature of my adolescence. Initiated by King Joao V in the early 18th century after God, the Pope, but really his put-upon (literally from what I hear about royal conjugal visits) wife, Mary Anne of Austria, starting popping out heirs, the palace took the better part of fifty years to complete. Hence, my mother’s constant question to my brother or me during our prolonged adolescent hair-grooming sessions in our locked bathroom: “What are you doing in there, constructing Mafra?”

2. The second day I was in Lisbon, even before the official start of Disquiet, I attended Jose Saramago’s memorial service. One year after his death, his ashes were interred under an olive tree brought from his hometown, his lovely, gracious window Pilar (see the documentary Jose and Pilar) presiding over press and public with regal poise. So you see, I got my dose of Saramago, royalty and fulfilled promessas.

So the morning and early afternoon of this second and final Sunday I’d spent on this particular visit to Lisbon passed in a soft blur of sleeping in, showering, grooming, and hanging out in the Living Lounge’s lounge. Sally Ashton, a bit nervous about the reading she was doing in the evening with Josip Novakovich, popped in and asked us a few questions.

At 4:00 p.m. we assembled in the stifling movie room/auditorium (aka a long table and fifty chairs) to hear Sally and Josip. Sally went first. The room was an airless oven but to her credit, Sally kept us engaged with some lovely poems, particularly one about Facebooking another Sally Ashton, an appropriate heteronymic exercise considering we were steps away from Fernando Pessoa’s birthplace. Unfortunately, by the time Josip began reading, my (and a few others’) sleep tax collector made his daily visit. Josip read a short piece, and then began a long, interminable, monotonous reading of something about Putin, an imprisoned American, Siberian tigers, a blonde and constantly insinuated but never consummated sex. At least I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. I forced myself out of my chair before lack of sleep and oxygen did it for me. The hallway was so much cooler. Josip’s reading finally ended. Someone then thought to open the windows.

Thank God, because we might not have physically survived long enough to watch the next item on the agenda, Nick Oulman’s wonderful documentary Com Que Voz (With What Voice). Oulman’s film is a touching but unsentimental profile of and homage to his composer father Alain Oulman. Oulman revolutionized traditional fado by introducing two contrasting tones into the music, an innovation Amalia Rodrigues took full advantage of and made her signature sound. The film is equally a loving and unsparing profile of Oulman’s mother, his parents’ marriage, and what happens when creativity is a stronger entity in a relationship than affection or family ties.

You Must Finish!

2011-07-09T15:30:00.003-04:00

It’s been a week to the hour since I’ve been back from my Lisbon adventure and only now am I beginning to emerge, to face the question of, What is real life anyway? And to also see with more clarity than ever that I must finish. Frank X. Gaspar exhorted those of us in Disquiet’s Luso-American writing workshop—“You must finish your projects!”—as if our lives depended on it. Because, in fact, our lives do. (Although the smartass in me wants to retort, would Finnish-American writers finish?”).

And so, I will finish this Lisbon 2011 blog, even if it kills me, even if I am late for my Gotham Girls roller derby bout in Manhattan tonight.

A week out it’s hard to remember details, and cryptic jottings in three different notebooks don’t help. What stands out are moments: Almodovar film-like flashes. Like the one of me sitting with fellow writers and friends at one of Antonio’s fabulous 9-Euro four-course/unlimited wine dinners at the Living Lounge hostel. Across the table is a Spanish family of four. The tall teenage son plays basketball. The lanky father pours us all wine and appreciates the women at the table. The green-eyed, olive-skinned pre-teen daughter smiles shyly. The talkative raven-haired mother replies, when I note my parents are Portuguese and I am American, “Pero, tienes la cara de pura Espanola!” Then, when I add that I really want to learn Spanish, “Claro!” as if, of course, why waste time on Portuguese? Who cares what Cervantes said about the “softer language.” We conquered them anyway. th th th

After dinner, a handful of us—Melissa, Jacob, Marisol, Marge, Sally, Traci, Amy, Linette, me and Carlos, sleep-deprived, high culture saturated, and grooving on each other’s company, get punchy. We make space in the hostel’s living room—or rather, the narrow swath between the dining table and the sitting area expands—and we begin to groove on the tunes pouring out of DJ Tight Jeans Italian Shoes Carlos Q. The Spanish family hovers as Traci, who could have been the stunt double for the two dancers who perform various times for Stephen Dorff's character in the Sofia Coppola movie, “Somewhere,” schools us all on how to really dance to Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. The Spanish family watches and smiles. The Spanish father would pour us all wine if there were any left in the box (and believe me, this is no insult: The boxed wine there would rate as a $50 bottle in the U.S.).

Suddenly, a group of Swedes shows up (or was that after? wait, I’m getting ahead of myself).

We dance until the hostel front desk guy tells us to tone it down. We decrease the decibels by one or two. The Spanish family takes this as their cue to call it a night. Amy and Traci, mindful of the last green line metro back to their digs across the city, peel away from us. Sally and Marge too call it a night and go to their rooms upstairs. We diehards continue, and I revel in the most exercise I’ve gotten since I arrived and was promptly bombarded with wine, cheese, bread, beer, bicas, and pastries, leftovers of which I carry in the new hamster folds of my midsection. Lord have mercy. Despite our having lowered the volume earlier, it has somehow creeped back up, way beyond its original max. DJ Carlos shimmies and spins in the center of our circle and we howl. The Ironbound boy’s got moves. Ah yes, this is when the Swedes, who have been sitting chatting on the couch, glancing at us now and then, get up the nerve and join our Solid Gold retro tribute. The nightclerk, beside himself now, has had it, comes very close to tossing us out. I glance at the doorway as he is motioning frantically and notice the little Spanish girl half hidden behind the post, her green-eyed gaze intent on us rowdy Americans. Above her, her mother’s very Spanish face appears and the little girl is gone in a blink.

No matter where we were or what we did, the days had this intense, mercurial quality that a chronological accounting doesn’t do justice to, but here’s a brief continuation anyway:

Thurs. 6/23. National holiday. I slept in and gathered with the Disquiet group in the evening at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa uptown to hear the talented 37 year-old writer Jacinto Lucas Pires read a story from his latest collection. Although, of course, Pires writes in Portuguese, he read the excellent English translation and spoke writing in and about Lisbon with an a Latin expressiveness that we fell in love with. I looked for his collection in bookstores a few days later but only came across one of his earlier books, “Azul-Turquesa,” which I’m reading now. It didn’t occur to me until his reading that Pires had actually sat at dinner in the Coliseo with a few of us and another prominent writer, Rui Zink, a few days earlier. In Lisbon, one takes such things for granted.

Fri. 6/24. Workshop in the morning and an excursion in the afternoon to the Arpad Szenes/Vieira da Silva Foundation, which is essentially a museum showcasing the work of, respectively, the Hungarian painter and the Portuguese painter. Artists, married partners, and mutual muses, they split their time between Paris and Lisbon. I had never heard of either, but their works were captivating, and Vieira da Silva’s line paintings capturing the winding freneticism of Lisbon in particular were a revelation.

The pair were close friends with the Mozambique-born Portuguese poet Alberto de Lacerda (1928-2007), and appropriately, the event that followed the museum trip was a tribute to de Lacerda at the Fundacao Mario Soares. De Lacerda clearly had a poetic muse in Walt Whitman, and, although the presentation by Luis Amorim de Sousa, a close friend of the poet, and addenda by Alfredo Caldeira and Scott Laughlin, were robust, at no point did anyone mention De Lacerda’s homosexuality, which seemed to be an important factor for a poet whose work so modeled Whitman’s sensual, corporeal expansiveness. This omission was especially glaring in light of the fact that: two of the de Lacerda poems read were clearly love poems to men, and an important component of the earlier discussion and presentation of Szenes and Vieira da Silva’s work was the impact of their marriage, their love story, on their work. Hmm…

To be continued...

Who the Hell Has Time to Write?

2011-06-22T21:56:00.002-04:00

no update since friday because as soon as the rest of the International Literary Program (ILP) people arrived on saturday, all bets were off. between eating, attending programing, workshopping (my group on writing the Luso-American experince with Frank X. Gaspar), hoofing it all around alfama, baixa-chiado, and other lisbon neighborhoods, getting to know talented writers from all across the USA (and some Portuguese ones too, including Rui Zink), eating some more, who the hell has had time to actually write, let alone sleep!
but this is about writing, and the writing is and will be.

brief rundown of happenings since last post:
sat night: get-to-know-ya group dinner at cervejaria trinidade, well known semi tourist trap former convent-brewery. good food but pricey. i had bacalhau in natas.

sun: gathering at the Centro Nacional de Cultura (CNC) to get the lay of the workshop land, then a sun-baked tour as an anglo herd through the alfama up to the plaza of S. Jorge church, whose vaulted gothic coolness invited a few of us in to contemplate after beers. then, trolley 28 back down to rua garrett and then back to the CNC for finger sandwiches and adult beverages, which, though tasty and appreciated, didn´t sate. bunch of us staying at the living lounge hostel had the homecooked 9 € dinner offered every night, and talked into the wees.

mon: snacks and chat with roommates at Pessoa´s Cafe´Brasileira before first workshop session. Frank X. set a tone of line edits bad, project purpose and how to fulfill it good. big picture stuff. finish finish finish your manuscript and get it out into the world will become his mantra. after workshop, CNC staff took us on a very portuguese (i.e. felt like reading footnotes) Fernando Pessoa walking tour. everything would be revealed about the man right down to his preference in underwear. i was dehydrated, hungry and still recovering from jet lag, so i cut out. back to the hostel to clean up for cocktails at the u.s. embassy.

or so my roomies and i thought. it wasnt the embassy but the private residence of the deputy counselor. this we learned after blowing some precious alloted euros on a cab ride to the embassy, where one of us then bothered to look at the program for the actual address, on the other side of town. more euros gone. the reception was lovely, but come on usa govt, why so unimaginative in the finger foodies? the same server with the same platter of drying pate on mini toast hit the group i was in four times before i suggested we move. a good move because we got to talk to the wonderful Rui Zink. the pate lady appeared again. soon, the alcohol dried up and that was everyone´s cue to leave. Frank Sousa, of Tagus press, wanted to go to the best (according to him) place for rotisserie chicken in town on the street of Portas de S. Antao. amy, melissa and i horned our way in. we were hungry, dammit. at the cab corner, i pulled a nyc move and snagged the first cab that came down the hill, practically tossing out some guy who tried to sneak in. no way buster. tony, frank x. and i ended up in the cab, me sitting in the front seat playing translator and listening to the cabbie sing the praises of Radio Amalia, which he had on, and offering up advice on the best places to eat and hear fado in town, which all the cabbies do. they´re all informal tour guides.

at the chicken place, i fell off the wagon and renounced my pesco-vegetarianism for the night. and you would too! the two Franks, Rui, Traci, Tony, Amy, Melissa and I gorged on frango, portuguese fries and got silly, a great way to get to know artistic eminences (i.e. me).

tues: are you kidding? i´m too exhausted from living la vida lisboa to get up at 11 am for a lecture and discussion about the state of portuguese publishing. please...i´ll sleep till 1pm instead then get up to go with roommated melissa to Maragrida Vale de Gato´s (name means Valley of Cat. may ask her later if she ever wished it was Vale das Bonecas) translation workshop at the Nova Universidade de Lisboa. holy shit, will that Margarida be impressive and that workshop more intellectually stimulating than a grad course at home. we will have our work cut out for us synthesizing theory and translating poems either into English from Portuguese or vice versa. Restitution indeed! I will choose to tackle Frank X. Gaspar´s poem´Ernestina, the Shoemaker´s Wife´. i´m not a wife but i wear shoes. I will buy a pocket dictionary at the rare book dealer´s table near the entrance and look up ´sapateiro.`
after the workshop, we proceed to the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD) near the basilica of Estrela to, in order of importance 1. filch as many of the free cookies, coffee and juice as possible, 2. hear Frank X. read his poetry and 3. listen to a panel presentation on the state of Luso-American representation in US publishing. afterwards, a bunch of us hoof it back to the street of the chicken place, this time to eat fish. an amazing brazilian street singer-guitarist entertains us. i buy a fedora.

wed: workshop in the morning, publishing panel in the afternoon, 20 minutes wait in the post office where there are no people on line to buy post card stamps, pit stop at a liquor store fora port wine tasting, off to hotel plaza lisbon to hear the franks talk about Tagus press and how it and the world needs our work, back to baixa-chiado for dinner sandwich on rua s. nicolau near the hostel, stroll to Praca Comercial and a toe dip in the Tagus, pastries at another of Pessoa´s cafes, to hostel to get comfortable, talk shop with colleagues, and now this, the writing i´ve made time for.
until we say bom dia again!

Francis Bacon

2009-08-24T17:17:00.003-04:00

Some random thoughts I had last weekend when seeing the paintings in the Francis Bacon exhibit on its last day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The artists who move me are those who manifest my dreams, across time and space, before my conscious eyes.

It was the first time I'd seen his work in person:

1. You will always resist what will change you, but you are still inexorably drawn
to it.

2. Henrietta Moraes (1931 - 1998) - what was a girl like that doing with a
Portuguese surname? I like the word "odalisque."

3. Intentional deformity, the psychological "elephant man."

4. His paintings look like postmodern roadkill, and that's not an insult.

5. Francis Bacon and Francis Bacon

6. Blue Men and "Mad Men."

prose poem for a pagan holiday

2009-04-11T23:45:00.010-04:00

easter saturday, day of extremes. from the bucolic scenery of warren county, jersey, placidly sinister in its recession ravished spring dress, the forsythias like strip mall sirens mocking the sere corn stubble of fields that haven't yet paid homage to america's 180 from the athenian ideal. their tendrils beckon me to find something better

than canal st. at this hour, the fake five dollar vendors closed like day blooming jazz.
over the manhattan bridge the lights look like anemones, an inverse easter bouquet.

there's beauty in the oddest places. even myrtle ave, clinton hill, where the double parked drivers and the u-turners don't pretend
they are anything other than.

the 12 between worlds

2009-03-26T00:56:00.002-04:00

i ended wednesday and started thursday, far from where i started, though i only traveled the length of my apartment and, out in the world, within a 12-mile radius. i rose at nine, early for me, my cat curled warmly in that harbor between elbow and thigh, and read chapters 13-16 of irène némirovsky "suite francaise" propped on pillows still smelling of dreams. i rose, fed the cat, brushed teeth, took out garbage and recycling while in my pajamas because i like to extend the boundaries of sleepwalking to encompass the quotidian. eventually, however, the quotidian insisted, politely but unequivocally, like the WW2 germans in french villages; we all know who rules the daytime: the body and the bank account (and is it a wonder that quotidian and quota share the same root?). so i breakfasted, on wheetabix liberally strewn with pecans and dried apricots then showered and dressed in black slacks,black boots, black turtleneck, a vintage 1979/80 burgundy velvet blazer, and, the final touch, a handcrafted pendant depicting a "men at work" figure shoveling. this is the closest i get to corporate drag. so armored, i went out into the world, resume in hand.

i never made it to the table where the interviewer for the english teaching job i intended to apply for sat. instead i spur of the moment switched camps and talked to the communications/performing arts guy and two visual artists. they were fairly alone on their cafeteria table islands, far from the madding and maddening crowd.

twelve miles later, i was back at home, my head pounding with the headache of ideas, that adrenaline-spurred rush that only good physical exertion can tame. so i traded suit for shin-guards and headed another twelve miles out in a totally different direction, to hold center for a team of over-competitive soccer princesses, who all came of age long after title 9 and cringe at the thought of turning 30 while i, though no stranger to cringing, decided, for the time being at least, to let the gray streak in my hair fly the flag of my almost 41 years. i took two breaks but ground the hell out of the 30 minutes i played the field. it killed my headache but buoyed my mood.

home for the night, i'm noting all this for the record. for some record. because the archaeologists of the future, who will all be data specialists, may perhaps marvel at the blogo/webo-sphere's dizzying effusion of "look at me! i lived a whole life before the hour changed."

thirst

2009-03-10T00:18:00.004-04:00

Last week, between money worries and road fatigue, I was so jittery, as soon as I got to my town in Jersey, I had to stop at a liquor store and buy a cold six pack of O'Doul's. K and I gave up alcohol for Lent (after we lent our livers to Mardi Gras and despite the fact she's never been Catholic and I'm only nominally so). Zero-point-five-percent alcohol by volume notwithstanding, I figured the placebo effect would be just as good at calming down my nerves over cancelled insurance, nonexistent job prospects, the end of the world as we know it, and no longer being able to follow the storyline on "Heroes." Once home, I fed the cat, trashed most of the mail the petsitter had so neatly arranged on the table, threw a frozen pizza in the oven, and changed into my "longshoreman leisurewear"--a hoodie sweatshirt, knit cap, fleece vest--and, in further homage to my longshoreman father, sprawled in my favorite (well, only) chair in front of the tv with brew in hand. I think I even scratched...the cat as she furiously rubbed against my legs, meowing protests over my having been gone the whole weekend to Brooklyn after being gone the whole week to Mardi Gras.

After lunch, I donned my black work gloves, an unsolicited "gift" from the Humane Society (guess the gazillion free address labels they usually send aren't enticing enough for donations), and went out to check my engine oil. Huah! My check engine light had clicked on, not in why-does-this-stretch-of-Route 10-remind-us-of-the-night-before-the-apocalypse, Louisiana, not in no-people-anywhere-but-strip-malls-aplenty-and-chickens-pecking-on-the-side-of-the-interstate, Tennessee, not in why-is-there-an-insane-asylum-across-from-our-motel, Virginia, not even in the first pass through back in what's-that-smell-ah-it's-home, NJ, but the moment I left Brooklyn. K would say it's a sign. The barely smudged end of the dipstick confirmed that the poor car was just thirsty after its 2,000 mile marathon.

panic of the 7's

2009-03-03T14:17:00.009-05:00

I haven't stopped panicking since we returned from our Mardi Gras road trip late last Friday--since, tired and rumpled from hours on rain-soaked Routes 81 and 78, I couldn't resist the urge to pick out and read (among the Smoky and Blue Ridge mountain sized pile on the table) the letter from my health insurance company notifying me that I had been disenrolled, was not longer "eligible." Of course I read this a nanosecond before bed, pretended, with my newly revived sense of adventure, that it didn't matter: I am danger-proof, waterproof, recession-proof, panic-proof. But I awoke next morning at the ungodly hour of 8:00 with that familiar rat eating my gut from the inside out. I carry him in there like other people transport a small pet in a cage or screened carrier-consciously or unconsciously showing off the cute creature to fellow passengers or pedestrians, knowing in that unknowing way that it will draw attention to themselves. Only my rat doesn't feel cute at all. I respect him--like I respect his cousin the subway rat, but it's more accurate to say he instills a melodramatic fear, like the rat in that old 70's movie, Ben (strains of quivering Michael Jackson for effect here please).

I never outgrew the 70's, so this reference is more than appropriate. I never outgrew the 70's or being 7, as I was in '75--interesting since the month and day of my birth are 5-7, one of my prized offerings when my bag of cleverness to impress other starts to empty. A friend who is the step daughter (barely) of an iconic sci-fi writer, whose work, from the little I know (I hadn't even heard of him when I met her at a writers retreat), emerged most prominently in the 70's, told me seven is the number (ah, but is it the word?) of mysticism in I forget which religion. Buddhism maybe?

I forget a lot these days. Makes me wonder if I'm an early candidate for the mental worm holes that plague the elderly inmates at the nursing home I've begun to visit as a newly-minted hospice volunteer. I don't know what I'm doing there most of the time--sitting being a "friendly presence" (like Casper the Ghost?) the hospice volunteer coordinator assures me "makes a difference." I forget a lot but when I lean at my visitees bedsides and look attentively into their shrunken apple faces, I have a feeling of deja vu. I recognize something familiar. Perhaps they too remember a hole torn in a new birthday outfit. Mine was in the knee (I think right, but let's say left), of the new plaid polyester pants presented me on my 7th birthday after a skidding fall on the blacktop driveway during a chase or a game--my few little girl friends (most likely the children of relatives my mother invited) running down boy "perps" in the style of embryonic Charlie's Angels (a year before that show, mother-banned to my viewing, debuted), but more likely bionic woman Lindsey Wagner/Jamie Sommers (a character who shared that unisex first name with my father, and thereby took the edge off of it). But of course, the people I visit don't remember my 70's. It's the last thing they would give a crap about if they had the option. Still, I get the strong sense that to them, womanhood and manhood newly amorphous, a torn pants leg, a missing jacket, a waylaid scrap, wanting to go home to a place that is and always has been temporal, is more important than the sum of panics over 'what's next?' 'what do I do now?' 'who do I have to call to get this bullshit straightened out?' Someone may or may not be dealing with that--beyond of course the maintenance of their current incarceration. Otherwise, someone else feeds them, cleans them, nurses them, friendly visits them, None of these know what happens when they cross the blacktop driveway out into the street--torn knees be damned--and disappear down the block, around the corner, into uncharted neighborhoods we've all grown up around.

After each visit, I get into my car and drive.

one of those days

2008-10-20T18:43:00.007-04:00

It's hard to let go of happy days, those rare blips of true peace and well-being over an ordinary lifetime of stress and bother, some self-created, some not, the two often indistinguishable. K left just under an hour ago. I dropped her off at the train station after a quick but totally present kiss, the kind in which you feel your being pouring into the other person for a few moments. Before the kiss we walked in the last full hour of daylight, the hour that comes too quicky these early autumn days, the bite of night and cold already around the edges. While we walked my suburban neighborhood, front lawns studded with curled brown leaves, election posters (mostly for Obama/Biden or democratic council members), and for sale signs that make me wonder who among those I saw at the last social event fell into the wrong ARMs, I thought about Roseann Cash's record "10 Song Demo." The songs on it always seem to evoke the mood I feel on days like today.

Before our walk, K and I sat at our respective computers and worked--she on a concept paper, I a bit on some editing, but mostly on this musing and jotting I'm so good at and so underpaid for. Our silent, companionable industry was interrupted only by my domestic buzzing--breaking out a snack of beer and salt and black pepper chips, before that a lunch of pizza, salad and beer, and before that the lupini beans I'd been saving for her.

We didn't get to our computers until noon, reasonable considering that's when "The View" ended and we had finished our breakfast oatmeal and coffee. (Yes, we eat often. Musing burns up a lot of energy.)

We didn't get to breakfast til 11, awake enough finally to feel hungry.

We didn't feel the sun from the window at at the head of the bed warming the edges of our pillows, warming us awake, until 10:00 or so, after 10 hours of solid sleep, 10 hours the gift of the first night of almost-frost, when, still pining for summer, our heads are too sluggish to think and our bodies want nothing but the essentials. Happiness isn't usually among these--contentment perhaps, but not happiness. There's a subtle difference, especially when the two stand in contrast to the stress of malfunctioning mass transit, resulting tepid dinners and curtailed conversations, and the cumulative frustration over the theft of jealously guarded hours and moments.

It's not that I'm advocating calling in sick as a way to make up such losses every time life stands in its own way. Email is so much better.

Hot Cocoa and Pomegranates

2008-10-15T14:23:00.006-04:00

Here I am on my deck tapping into my neighbor's WIFI and enjoying one of Persephone's last days before she has to open the dundgeon door, bid a tearful adieu to her mother and return to Hades. My cat is climbing the screen door trying to bust out after I let her out of the bag, if you will, to roam the six feet (less if you consider the angle of the rail I hitched her to) her harness and leash allow. She actually starts purring when she sees me whip out the harness. Hmm, she may have a career in certain other dungeons too.

It is one of the last days of the season I can sit out on my deck and work or daydream. Even so, the Indian Summer 70 degrees doesn't stop the chill from creeping up my fingers as I type. I wonder if Persephone was really that close to her mom, or whether Ceres was actually the archetypal nagging type myth has simply softened over the millennia. Maybe Persephone looked forward to her annual winter retreat. Hot cocoa and pomegranates anyone?

gen eXistential

2007-02-01T13:44:00.002-05:00

I feel like I've been going through a mid-life crisis since I was about 16. The past few years my "self-discovery" has become such a preoccupation that I sometimes feel paralyzed. Finding my calling so to say is a near constant battle inside my brain. Photography retreats, food courses, pottery classes, now guitar lessons. I think I'm much more than the sum of my parts. Do I really want to write restaurant reviews on a blog? Do I want to go to culinary school or get my MFA? Or do I just want to stay at my job that I could do blindfolded? I know I'm not the next American Idol (nor want to be). Am I really good at anything? Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. Call it an existential crisis.

Call it my friend Peter ("eating for brooklyn" 2/1/07 ) hitting the nail on the head for a lot of us 30 & early 40-somethings going on…what? It’s the “going on” that bedevils. It’s been going on so long that it feels like going nowhere. Hey, isn’t that a line from one of those songs that “for a split of a second [make] everything seem alright”? Probably. Find it, send it to me and you’ll get a prize.

Why this need to make a mark and be more than we are—flesh-formed consciousness trying to figure it out? Is it because we live in the metropolitan center of the universe? Are we nothing more than mercury-contaminated feeder fish caught in the charybdis of access, ambition, and accomplishment (cleverly clothed in hip irreverence of course), that keeps the real estate market tight in this town when every other place feels like someone just unstopped the tub? Who knew there was such a disparity between living and having a life?

I am losing my job in exactly three months. Tick tock. Haven’t sent out a resume in at least a week and a half. Been too busy: being online (now there’s a term just begging for major deconstruction); researching healthcare options for life post job-provided insurance (cause, as my boss says, if everyone had universal healthcare, no one would ever want to work); finishing the beginnings of stories for my master's, and just because; reading for my required theory class (Postcolonialism!); playing bad rhythm guitar in a basement-coffeehouse band whose members look like an assortment of Freaks and Geeks decades on; playing soccer 25 years after childhood dreams of backyard glory; wrangling with a family who doesn’t understand why I could be so selfish as to actually do what I like; trying to make time for friends, and yes, family; and, finally, loving on K. Loving on K is the best part everything, maybe the best part of everything I haven’t yet done.

wintercession

2007-01-02T12:04:00.001-05:00

Co-worker K (as opposed to my co-conspirator K) shares my and the web manager's small one-room office. She signed up for an online winter session class for her graduate program. We were regaled with the particulars of her decision-making and registration process, her struggle to gain approval from her program director, her satisfaction at gaining said approval, her relief that the class would count towards her degree, her immense contentment at the prospect of completing the coursework while at work, and her excitement about knocking off three credits in two short weeks.

Today is the first day of class. So far we have been treated to: her frustration in trying to locate the online class bulletin board; her joy at finding the site; her concern that, based on the listed readings and discussion topics, the class will be boring; her realization that perhaps she did not have enough of a break between classes; her reservations about posting a forum comment that might alienate her classmates; her relief at posting the comment; her disappointment that her post sounds superficial.

This is only day one. “This class is going to be a pain,” she just said. Sure looks that way…

privacy, secrecy, dark rooms

2006-10-31T16:20:00.001-05:00

Between August and September, just weeks after their first meeting in the office, O was already staying most nights at E’s garage apartment. When she received her eviction notice—the garage under the oaks set for demolition to clear the land for two subdivisions—they painted the walls in whimsical tropical scenes in between bouts of packing.

Then she moved into his condo with him and it was suddenly Jekyll and Hyde, "None of your business!," privacy, secrecy, dark rooms.

O was left scratching his head.

He paid for the shed in Gonzales she lived in afterwards, and relocated east, back to his roots. He left no forwarding address, just his old work info:

Manager, Policy Standards Implementation
The Western Commission on Quality
1 Forked Road
San Sequestrado, TX

For all anyone knows E is still in the dark.

Then one day, for no reason beyond boredom and exhausted employment prospects, O decided to go looking for E.