eclipsed

Last year when I was in Spain, waking up every day before the sun, I'd find the moon in the sky, like the eye of God. For a whole month I walked, and as I grew full with the wonder of that experience, the moon bloomed full above me and with me. And with nothing but tangled thoughts and blistered feet to distract, in the early morning hours, the soft light above always soothed, a cool, silent and welcome company leading the way.

Most of the time, all I need do to get back to that quiet, that peace, is to simply, so simply, tilt my chin. . . and look up.

Tonight the moon is so very bright. White as bleached bone. Luminescent as a pearl. Soundless as eternity.

As I write this, I'm sitting on the driveway behind my house, watching the moon running from the dim silhouette of our earth. Watching the moon lose it's futile race with the eclipse that's ever so slowly drawing a grey veil across its radiance and I can't help but feel a correspondence with the darkness, a wrenching sadness born of separation from the light.

I am blessed. I am blessed with more than I could even begin to write here. But for all my blessings, tonight I am sad.

Just the barest sliver left.

On a grand level, our country is conflicted and confused and caught in the mire of a political struggle -- a global struggle -- beyond most of our ken. On a personal level, my circle of friends this week lost one of our own.

A hair's breath. . .

. . . and she's gone.

In a few hours the moon will be back in all her glory. Next week, the elections done, we'll begin to heal from the fight. My friend, our friend, now someplace where shadows don't stretch, is I hope at peace and knows a joy unlike any she ever knew here with us.

For the moment the moon is dark and things feel unsettled. But I take comfort in the knowledge that given a couple of hours the shadow will pass. It always does. And the truth of that knowing is a blessing in itself.

fear and loathing

Since when did we become a culture of fear? When did that happen? Have I been napping all my life or has it really, truly gotten worse in the past few years? And is anyone else as sick of it and bone-weary exhausted, tired-to-the-point-of-collapse-at-even-the-thought-of-it-fatigued, as I am?

Apparently, we're doomed. The world is falling apart. And there's nothing we can do about it -- unless you buy a certain brand of deodorant. Unless you put ALL your money in the right bank. Unless you vote for a specific presidential candidate. And then everything will be fine. Sunny. Cheery. Balloons, butterflies and penny-candy great. But be careful because if you make the wrong choice, you will die. You will. Like they keep telling us. Choose or Die! But really, the subtext of the message is Choose AND Die, because the fanatics rule on one side and the hysterics on the other and both are convinced (and will try to convince you) that down the other road lies destruction.

Rock up against a hard place, anyone?

For instance, hypothetically, let's take mayonnaise. Some advertisers might posit that if you choose the wrong brand of mayonnaise, the terrorists will get you. And they will get you because your condiment of choice, in a convoluted and hazy chain of connected and heinous activities that involve things like illegal arms deals, the inappropriate stuffing of body cavities and also you know, heroine somehow supports their cause. Sure, you think you're just buying your favorite brand of extra flavor goodness for your sandwich, but no, you selfish bastard, you are sponsoring the evil misdeeds of the devil's offspring. You and your desperate need for mayonnaise are the cause of all the world's ills. "So," says the happy voice-over "buy Miracle Whip instead." Or even better, mustard. Because it has been proven with unequivocal certainty that there are absolutely NO terrorists attached to the mustard industry.

For now.

Tomorrow, however, could be a completely different story, because anyone is allowed to say anything with impunity these days. Even when they contradict themselves. And no one blinks. The media and the masses who love hearing what they love to hear just let the false-sayers and prevaricators get away with it. Thusly:

Governor running for re-election: I despise Mayonnaise. Its very existence tears at the social fabric of our society. Mayonnaise is directly related to the drug-problem in our suburbs, or as I like to call them the "new inner cities," promiscuous May-December sex between movie stars and the decline of social security.

Journalist: But Governor, didn't you just recently say that mayonnaise was good for the American people?

Governor running for re-election: No, Bippy, I said no such thing.

Journalist: Governor, let's look at a tape of a speech you gave last week to Mayonnaise Lovers of America for America.

Governor running for re-election on tape: Fellow mayonnaise-lovers, I am here to say that mayonnaise is the greatest invention in the history of mankind. Without mayonnaise we could not have gone to the moon. Without mayonnaise the Cold War would still be in effect. Without mayonnaise, my wife would have left me for a wealthier, better looking and more masculine man years ago. Mayonnaise is the single most relevant factor in the success of our country to date.

Journalist: Governor?

Governor running for re-election: Well, Bippy, you must recognize that it was taken out of context.

Journalist: I see. And now I want to ask you about J-walking.

What the fuh?!

Let me tell you something. I am not afraid. I am not afraid that my colors will fade if I use the wrong detergent. I am not afraid of gay marriage or carbohydrates. I'm not afraid that someone's going to steal my identity and buy a waterbed with it. I am not afraid that I'm going to get cancer from my cell phone or the blue sugar substitute. I am not afraid that Vikings are suddenly going to descend upon me while I peacefully sip coffee at a roadside café and catapult me from my chair if I use the wrong credit card. I am not even afraid of the lies, because I have a brain and I use it to come to sane conclusions.

I'll practice caution when necessary, but I reject irrational fear. Do you hear me? I REJECT IT! And I reject the lies that they tell to make me jump through hoops. If doing so makes me jaded, then so be it. I don't like being jaded, but I'd rather be jaded than afraid.

Hey, and you know what else I'm not afraid of? I'm not afraid of the mayonnaise-loving terrorists. Because there's nothing I, personally, can do about them. Do I want to invite them over for dinner? No. Would I like them to stay in their part of the world (or holed up in their house down the street where they were born because they're actually American) and leave us alone? Yes. Do I plan on vacationing this springtime in any of the many oppressed and unsettled backwaters on our planet? No. But I refuse to give those who would do me and mine wrong the power of my fear either. And excuse me, but the government should work to protect us because it's its job to protect us. And they should do so without feeling it necessary to scare us into relinquishing our civil rights in the process. Because they should be working to protect those, too. It's what makes this country great -- those civil rights. It's what sets us apart. And safety without freedom is no better than a padded cell.

I'm beyond angry at the fear mongering that the politicos are selling to get our votes and that the media perpetuates to get those ad dollars. The ad dollars are ubiquitous. Nothing we can do about those. But soon the election season will be over and we'll have a brief respite during which to catch our breaths. Only for a few more days will we have to listen to them all try to convince us of how much danger we're in. Because I guarantee you that regardless of who is elected, come Nov. 3, the message we'll hear from the White House will miraculously herald: YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR!!

Right.

Here's what I know. Regardless of what detergent I buy, my blacks aren't ever as black as I'd like and my whites aren't nearly as white. In fact, everything, despite the ad jingles and peppy dance numbers, after a few washings is just sort of grey. And that, my friends, ain't nothing to be afraid of.

losing the light

Hey, does anyone know what happened to last week? Raise your hand if you took last week. It's ok. I won't be mad. From all accounts it was a crappy week anyway and I don't really want it back. But I'm looking for leads on the guy with the light. Not all the light -- just the early morning and early evening light. I've worked it out with the D.A. and we're willing to grant amnesty in return for any leads on the thief of luminescence.

Anyone?

No?

'k.

I'm just having a very difficult time getting anything done in the dark. Sure, the lamps are working, feeling good about themselves even. All shining warmly. Providing a nice counterpoint to the cool glow of the television that compels my attention once the real light goes. But it's not like they're really helping. Even with all their soft yellow glow. Even with all their brave brightness. No, they're just glaring reminders that the real light's gone. Gone with its cheery doses of vitamin D and its happy little message that a day is more than an eight or nine hour stint in an amputated box that's missing half a wall. Frankly, the lamps and their on-ness, just put me in a foul mood. The lack of real light simply robs me of my sense of humor, not to mention any motivation to be productive in any facet of my life. Including the production of this site. So I'm sorry it's lain fallow this past week, but if you could just, you know, feel out your feelers, contact your contacts, connect with your connections, we can find the guy with the light, drag his ass back into town and get this thing up and running again.

Thanks.

burniture

Burniture (v/n) - The act of collecting wrecked wooden furniture off the side of the road and building a bonfire from the scraps. 2) The event during which much alcohol is consumed and much music played while watching furniture burn.



It was a short-lived fad in our little circle, thanks in part to a crumbled love triangle -- the primary burniture aficionados being friends and there being a girl in between, a conflagration to match the bonfire was really inevitable from the get-go -- and in part, well, you know, to the fire department. For some reason, they failed to see the ecological benefits of our little events, absolutely refused to acknowledge the concept of our fire as a valid recycling tool.

Honesty, I shouldn't say "our." I only went to one burning. But the stories trickled out and my favorite involved Suitor A of the triangle standing in the middle of the fire, guitar in hand and singing through the flames. Since I wasn't there, I don't know how he didn't pass out from smoke inhalation. I don't know how he escaped sans singe. But he did. Maybe the alcohol burned off first, protecting skin, hair and clothes. Regardless, I don't wonder if that was the beginning of the end for Suitor B. I mean, who can compete with a fireproof rockstar? You've got to be some kind of hot to withstand that kind of heat. Your inner flame has to burn right-mighty-crazy bright.


Unfortunately, the only one I was able to attend was the one the fire department also attended. The one at which they sternly explained that our measly garden hose was no match for the fourteen foot flames we were in the processs of stoking with dilapidated cabinetry, paint-chipped shutters and abandoned banisters.

We were instructed in no uncertain terms to put it out and much to my deep disappointment, we did. Disappointed because I had something of the non-furniture variety to burn and these helmeted holier-than-thous were snuffing my plan. I wanted cleansing by fire and they had doused my detergent. Dumb ol' slicker-wearing joy-kills.

So what did I want to burn? Suffice it to say there was a relatively brief, but intense and ultimately doomed relationship during which there were many, many, MANY overly emotive, syrup-laden, tooth-achingly sweet emails exchanged due to the long-distance nature of said relationship. And somehow I got custody of them.

(I got custody of them and of the pesky fucking ellipses that came along with writing them. The ellipses, his ridiculous and meaningless writing tick that I caught like a communicable disease during the epistolary portion of our relationship. The ellipses that I can't shake . . . that plagues my writing to this day . . . that I HATE.)


And while the relationship ended forever ago, I'd just never managed to find a way to toss the emails away -- the book of emails, I should say, in thickness to rival the Guggenheim Bible. And with all the emotional investment, I couldn't in good conscience just throw them in the same place I throw egg shells and olive cans. Besides, they would still exist. Somewhere. In a dump. Preserved in plastic. And I would know.

Instead, being the clever girl that I am, I tried to hide them from myself. But that didn't work, because even when I managed to forget where they were -- maybe because I'd forget where they were -- I'd invariably stumble across them like one might a rotted peach at the back of the fridge. It was so lovely once. Now it's just a goo-ified mess. Most people would throw away the rotting peach. I just moved mine around. Like I said, I'm clever that way. I even tried to give it new value by fung shui-ing it behind a bookshelf in the wisdom/knowledge corner of my house. But I always knew it was there. A rotting peach smells like a rotting peach, no matter how smart a peach it is.

And now that I had an opportunity to ditch those missives with appropriate ceremony, come hell or high-water-boot-wearing firemen, I was going to rid myself of that festering lovelorn mojo.
Luckily, we had a chiminea. Sort of hard to stuff an armoire into, but big enough for a few (okay, a lot of) emails. It would do.

Step AWAY from the chiminea, ma'am!
Move SLOWLY and you won't be hurt!
What are you doing with those papers, ma'am?
Ma'am? Ma'am? Why are you crying, ma'am?


Is there anything more humiliating than losing your composure in public? All coughing sobs and tears from some desolate pain OH-THE-PAIN kind of pain place?
"It's just that it's proof you know," I'd choked out, all soupy-faced and gurgle throated, "that someone. . . (fucking ellipses) someone that wasn't related to me by blood or covered in fur or anything, really, actually loved me." [Insert deep, shaky sigh] "At least for a little while."

Sooooooo. Horribly. Pathetic.

But it did the trick. People holstered their firearms and stepped gingerly away from the crazy girl hugging the chiminea, and allowed me to dump my past in peace.

Needless to say, there was something awfully satisfying about finally throwing that BOOK OF EMAILS on the flame and watching the flame consume the BOOK OF EMAILS page by page, charring each into individual oblivion.

And then someone noticed that the BOOK OF EMAILS was actually SMOTHERING the fire. THE BOOK OF EMAILS WAS STRONGER THAN THE FLAME. Oh inthenameofallthat'sholy, this is RIDICULOUS. Can we not be DONE with this?! THIS is why one needs a BONFIRE!

Still, the irony struck and I couldn't help but mutter a rueful, "How appropriate," which sort of broke the tension and made us all laugh.


And as I poked angrily at the BOOK OF EMAILS and blew angry oxygen into the mouth of the chiminea, I couldn't help but mutter a rueful, "How appropriate."

Honestly, it wasn't that funny, but someone laughed anyway and then someone else, and before long we were all in a state of hysterics. It was just one of those moments.

But in that moment that wasn't really all that funny despite the nonsensical laughing, I realized that the pain OH THE PAIN kind of pain that had been roiling on the surface had become no more than the merest breath of a simmer under a great deal of hope. Because as we laughed and I watched the last remnants of that love burn, I couldn't help but think of Suitor A, standing tall in the flames. . . and singing.

deck-maker

My mother says you play the hand you're dealt, but frankly I'm much more interested in making my own deck.

god-hole

The piece was unbalanced. The "piece" -- as if it were an installation or something. Really, it was nothing more than an elaborate doodle I was sketching as I listened to Montine chat with an artist acquaintance while I was hanging out at her studio yesterday morning. But it was unbalanced, a tower on the fall, pieces breaking off in the process.

I say Montine was chatting, but really Mike was doing all the talking. Mike had just popped by to check out the studio. Mike wanted to know about classes. Maybe he might take one. Mike pontificated about art and about his process and about his next phase. And then in that out-of-left-field, blunt-object-to-the-back-of- the-head, not-quite-slight of hand way that some people have of broaching a topic. . .

"Do you go to church?"

"MMmmm. . . noooo," Montine says carefully, "I'm not really a church person."

"Have you ever gone to this church?" Mike presses, indicating the church above our heads, the one from which Montine rents her studio space.

"Once," she answers, "A long time ago. It's a really nice congregation, very open." And then skillfully, batting it back to him, "Are you looking for a church?"

"Yes. I just moved and I can't find one in-town that I really like."

"What are you looking for in a church?" Montine asks, displaying a real conversational generosity that always escapes me in these situations.

"Friends," Mike answers with no elaboration.

And then I missed the jump where the topic changed to his recently diagnosed cancer, caught early and so now he's on the mend:

First stage lung cancer that they caught by accident.

The morning they found it, he'd read his daily angel card and it said he would be protected.

Most people die from lung cancer.

And yes, he smoked.

He didn't really need chemo, he said. But he decided to get it anyway.

He didn't lose his hair, he said. But he decided to cut it off anyway.

Poor Mike, I couldn't help thinking. And not because of the cancer.

In a corner of the studio, a painting stands nine-feet tall. A monster-man with a hole in his gut glowers down. "Whoever painted that," Mike nods importantly, as he leaves, "I think they need to feed their God-hole."

Fred jumped into my lap. Fred has no interest in God-holes.

"You know, Mike," Montine says gently, "In this studio, our philosophy is that what people see in the art is less about the artist who painted it and more about what they see in themselves."

Montine's studio space may be in the basement of a church. Montine herself is kind beyond measure and to my mind often displays the patience of an actual saint. Montine is unquestionably an exceptional friend. But even she can't fill someone's empty God-hole.

for singapore

Okay, call me provincial, but I love, Love, LOVE that there's a person in Singapore who reads this site on a regular basis. (Hello, Singapore!) I love what that represents -- that connections can be made across geographical and temporal and cultural boundaries. I love that the stuff rattling around in my head and falling out across these pages makes sense even on the other side of the planet, even if it's only to one other person. Of course, for all I know, that one other person may be a thirty-year-old chick from the States, working as a communications liaison for an American company while simply living in Singapore. But still.

Everyday, I meet people who live in my neighborhood, who generally share my cultural background and yet when we converse, I have to lean in closer to listen for fear of misunderstanding their intent. And even leaning and listening and squinting my eyes, (because squinting my eyes helps me listen better), I sometimes leave shaking my head in an effort to untangle the meaning of their words. Conversely, I've seen my fair share of blank stares on confused faces as I explain my needs and wants in what seem to me to be very clear terms. I've seen those blank stares on the faces of people I love. On the face of people who love me. At times, on the faces of people who raised me. And yet there's someone in Singapore who's clear. It's crazy, don't you think? Wonderfully so, but still, on some level wackadoo-nuts.

Last summer, when I was in Spain, I met a girl named Marta. Her English was better than my Spanish, but as I was in Spain, I was determined to communicate in my stumbling three-week old Spanish and so the conversations we shared were, shall we say, rudimentary at best? And yet, after five minutes we were the best of friends. A year and a half later, we still are. There's something between us that transcends language, just as in some ways, at times, language can't overcome core personal differences.

So what am I trying to say? I guess I'm saying that there's a person on the other side of the world that seems to get what I'm saying, even when at times I'm just putting stuff out there to get it out of my head. Stuff that in its as-yet-uncompleted-state, I'm not even sure I completely understand. And that person is going on this ride with me. And I am most grateful for the support. And there are a few others of you out there, though for the most part you've reached out. Which I think is very cool and if I had a door prize to give, I'd give it to you.

But, Singapore, this entry is for you. Just to say you make me think about Singapore more than I ever have before and thanks for spending time here. When you are so moved, drop me a line. Send an email. You know my story. I'd love to know yours.

like the auntie mame of stage and screen

When I was born, my father dubbed his sister, my Aunt Patricia with the nickname "Auntie Mame," after the vibrant and eccentric character of stage and screen. On so many levels, it applies, but probably not in the way he'd imagined. She's vibrant all right, with an ever-ready laugh and a penchant for big, bright prints. And eccentric. I mean, how many ex-nuns do you know who marry Jewish husbands? How many aunts do you have who refuse -- I mean ABSOLUTELY REFUSE -- to accept a gift if it appears to be something that might need dusting sometime in the future? How many relatives do you know that have completely put down and then removed the wall-to-wall carpeting in three separate homes before going back every single time to parquet flooring?

"Aren't you the one who told me that doing something again and again and expecting a different result is an indication of insanity," I asked after the third removal/installment.

"Well, yes, but this is different. And besides, it's all Ken's fault."

For the record, everything is always my uncle Ken's fault. Some might find that burdensome after a while, but he seems to handle it with good grace, if also a lot of sighing and hands-in-the-air-throwing and bowed head-shaking.

"Except that it's really my fault," she confesses more quietly and with a little conspiratorial laugh.

"You see, Ken likes carpeting. I hate wall-to-wall carpeting. So I let him get it, but you just can't clean it. Carpet always looks dirty to me. If you get the dark stuff, every little piece of string shows. With the light stuff and the dogs and the peeing by the dogs it gets stained and . . . forget it. I hate carpet. I can't stand it. I LOVE my hard wood floors. You Swiffer it. You take a damp cloth and voila! It's clean!" And then she adds by way of explanation or to excuse herself from sounding completely certifiable, "You know how everyone has their thing."

"Yeah," I say, laughing, "but you have lots of things."

"But this would be a main thing. My main thing is floors."

And like with the Auntie Mame of stage and screen, there's no arguing with mine. So last night on the phone, her main thing was floors. Tomorrow it might be pickles.

"You know I hate pickles," she'll say to my uncle. "Why would you buy me a sandwich with pickles?!"

"What are you talking about?" he'll gasp in surprise. (He does that a lot. Actually, we all do. There's always a lot of gasping-in-surprise around my Auntie Mame.) "You LOVE pickles!"

"Well, yeah, but not those pickles. Those are nasty pickles ," she'll dismiss, wrinkling her nose and pursing her lips. "I only like pickles that come in a jar when you know that no one's touched them."

"How do you think they make the rest of the sandwich?!" he'll reason, jaw dropped in confused bemusement, "They have to touch the rest of the sandwich to make the sandwich, too!"

"But that's different," she'll demur.

"HOW?! How is that different?" he'll demand.

"It just is," she'll say. And that will be that.

But floors and pickles aside, really, her honest-to-God main thing is her love for her dogs, her four Bichon Frises -- Rambo, Rocky, Popcorn and Hercules. If the Auntie Mame of stage and screen had a passion for travel, mine's main passion is for her puppies. And they are equally devoted to her. Obsessively so. To the exclusion of all else on the planet. Even my uncle. Who feeds them. Who brushes their teeth. Nightly. At my aunt's behest, of course.

So I wasn't remarkably surprised when last night, while on the phone with her, all of a sudden a deafening cacophony of Bichon barking erupted in the background followed by the following "conversation":

"You SCARED them!" she's yelling at my uncle over the chaos.

"By walking into my own bedroom?!" I hear him yell back, just to be heard over the continuing roar.

"They were SLEEPING!" she yells in response.

"They were sleep-ing," she tsks disapprovingly to me and then laughing in delight as one would at the antics of a favorite trained monkey, "TRY IT AGAIN, HON!"

"Once bitten, twice shy," he quips back from the other room, having made a swift exit.

"What does he mean 'once bitten?'" I want to know.

"Oh, Rocky bit him," she says nonchalantly as one might say, Oh, I bought milk today.

"Rocky bit him? Why?! When did this happen?"

"Last week," she tells me and then shouts so her husband can hear, "He came into the bedroom in a THREATENING MANNER."

"I did NOT!" I hear him from afar. "I was simply walking to the dresser. He bit me for NO REASON WHATSOEVER."

"He did," she confirms, giggling, "You're such a bad dog," she tells Rocky. But I can tell she's petting him as she says it. And then to me, "Right on the knee. It was really horrible." And then gasping theatrically for punctuation, "Ken was bleeding." And then, pointedly, "But, you know, it really was his own fault."

"HOW IS IT MY FAULT?!" my uncle demands, once again shouting over a chorus of barks as he walks back into the bedroom, "Am I not allowed to walk freely through my own house?! Am I not king of this castle?! Lord and master of my domain?!" I can picture him, arms akimbo, eyes wide with disbelief.

"Well. . . no," my aunt states with a certain definite finality, leaving no room for argument or debate.

I can practically hear my uncle sigh in defeat, "You've trained them to hate me," he accuses. "Jill, your aunt has trained her dogs to hate me!" he yells.

"They don't hate you!" she tells my uncle Ken.

"They don't hate him," she explains me.

"They looooove their Papa Ken," she reminds the dogs.

And then, gleefully, back to me, "But they love me more."

And as with the Auntie Mame of stage and screen, the same thing can be said of mine: At the end of the day, what isn't there to love?

this is fred

Look. I know he's adorable. It's an undeniable fact. And you can't even see him in action, so you don't know -- you don't know! -- how seriously irrisistable he actually is. But please, if you ever do meet him, do me a favor and control yourself -- at least until we all exchange last names. An inordinate number of people feel free to kiss my dog and nuzzle his belly and frankly, it freaks me out. The last time we went to the vet, I thought I was witnessing some sort of cross-species porn flick there was so much kissing and nuzzling and gently whispered afterglow-like cooing. In all seriousness, I don't know where your mouth has been and while Fred is "clean" in the sense that he's got all his shots and is disease free, you'd be wise to remember that one of his favorite activities is eating and rolling in what my friend Rikki calls Almond-mocha-rocha. . . a.k.a. cat shit. So. Admire and fawn at will, but fair warning: keep your mouth to yourself.

objectionable

You know how the moment someone tells you that you're not supposed to do something, it's almost as if you are then compelled to do just that thing that they've told you you shouldn't do? It's as if you've been taken over by an alien force that sucks your will and moves you with some all-powerful extra-terrestrial astral device toward that which you know you MUST. NOT. DO. But you can't help yourself and you're screaming in your head, "NO! I MUST NOT DO THIS HORRIBLE THING!" But now the idea is out there. IT'S OUT THERE. And now you MUST do it even though it's something which you probably would never have even contemplated doing before someone told you that you couldn't? You know that feeling?

Well, that's happening to me right now. You see, my mother's twin sister, my Aunt Ann emailed me yesterday after being told by her daughter Corinne to check out this site -- this site that you are at this very moment reading. So I sent her the link. We talked later that night and she was very complimentary which made me really happy even though she's family and so she has to say nice things. But then she went a step farther and asked if she could send it to some of her friends -- some of her church friends -- adding as we got off the phone, "Oh, now there's not anything objectionable in it, is there?"

So, I'm sorry, Aunt Ann, but you put it out there. I've spent all day fighting it, but I can fight no longer. There WAS nothing objectionable. (Though come to think of it, someone did get to my site by Googling the words "sugar daddy" and "buy gifts." It made me feel so cutting edge, so risqué, so objectionable. But it was a false sense of objectionability -- the entry wasn't really all that off-color.) I don't know for a fact that you'll find this entry objectionable, Aunt Ann, but I have to tell you that it won't be exactly G-rated either. I plan on using the words, "Ass," and "Sex" for sure. There may be others equally profane, but those are the only two I'm certain about. (Really, Auntie, it's all your fault. I can't be blamed for aliens with tractor-beams, now can I?) Having said that. . .

WARNING! IF YOU ARE A FRIEND OF MY AUNT ANN FROM IOWA, STOP READING RIGHT NOW. I REPEAT, STOP READING RIGHT NOW. THE FOLLOWING ENTRY MIGHT BE CONSIDERED "OBJECTIONABLE."

Now that that's out of the way. The conversation with my aunt made me start thinking about how very unobjectionable my life really is. How ridiculously low my life rates on the objectionability scale, whatever she might imagine it to be. It's pathetic. Less Sex and the City, more the cartoon strip "Cathy" minus the compulsive shopping, the nutsy mother, the series of loser dates (what's a date, again?) and the deep-rooted neurosis. See, my life isn't even as objectionable as a stupid cartoon strip. Seriously. This is my day: I wake up. I go to the park with Fred. I go to work. I drink coffee. I write this blog. I go to bed. That's my life. I do have friends with considerably more going on. Friends who occasionally must make VOWS OF CELIBACY. I am so jealous of their vows of celibacy, because it means that they have to stop doing that which they were getting to do on a regular basis before. Which makes absolutely no sense to me. But then who am I to judge -- me, in my organically celibate state?

As an aside: The gas man came to my house last week to check a leak and asked me if I had an old man.

I pointed at Fred.

He said, "No, like a boyfriend."

I said, stupidly, "No."

He said, "Oh, are you a gay?" (What up big whopping LEAP of logic?! I have no boyfriend, ergo I must be gay? The male ego baffles. And who says "a gay?" Still, it didn't take away the sting.)

"No," I sighed, "not even that."

(See Aunt Ann, I'm not having sex AND I'm not gay -- what more could you want?! But that's not what I wanted to write about. That's not what I've been feeling compelled by alien forces to write about. What I feel compelled to write about is. . . )

MY ASS.

I have to capitalize MY ASS, because it's grown to such enormous proportions that small letters would no longer do it justice. Moreover, it's grown to such enormous magnitude all sneaky-like, when I wasn't looking, which isn't, I suppose, all that hard to do, because it's behind me and consequently I don't look at it too often. But I should have, because if I had seen what it was up to, then I could have done something about it when it was still recognizable as a part of my anatomy.

And it wasn't even accidentally catching its huge, giganticness out of the corner of my eye in the full-length mirror that clued me in that MY ASS had grown to out-of-control proportions. No, it's worse. I FELT it. And not with my hands, either, happenstance, as one might expect when brushing off some speck of dust or blade of grass such as one accumulates when all one does is go to the park with one's dog. No, no, no -- I felt it. Or perhaps I should say, I sensed it. I put on a pair of dungarees that I don't wear all that often, a pair that are sort of stretchy and form-fitting in what used to be an attractive way. And when I put these jeans on yesterday, they cradled MY ASS in such a way that I actually SENSED its largeness. It was as if something was attached to it that wasn't IT. So surreal, the sense of one's own horrifically huge ASS. I immediately took the pants off and looked to see if anyone had sewed into them a faux rubber ass like the one I once saw a character wear in Queer as Folk. His was used to trick men into thinking he was all hottie-bubble-butt guy. Mine, alas, was . . . no, is. . . real. No bubble-butt-sewing fairies sneaking into my pants, more's the pity.

I comfort myself with the hope that this may be the beginning of an epidemic. It seems the winter weight has set in early in my circle of friends and acquaintances. I know this not because I've noticed people are heavier, but because several friends have commented on my skinniness. For the record, I'm not. Read the paragraph above about MY COLOSSAL ASS. But I am, empirically, small. (I'm 5'2", weigh a pretty consistent 115 lbs and wear tall shoes, so I seem taller and slimmer.) People only comment on my smallness when they themselves feel fat. I noticed the phenomenon with pregnant friends and had recently expanded my theory to cover friends in the throws of a fat upswing. And now, I must add myself to their ranks, but without the comfort of self-deception. I can't tell you how many cute, perky, diminutive and yet well-shaped derrieres I've seen as of late. I'd love to believe that they were just making them smaller these days. . . . But I know. That MY ASS. Is huge.

What's even more amazing than the largeness of MY ASS, however, is how those ever-so-clever aliens managed to create a device powerful enough to move MY ASS in all its huge giganticness and all its enormous grandiosity, with such incredible ease, to write something that my aunt is sure to find objectionable. Sorry, Aunt Ann, it really couldn't be helped. Please see the aliens with all complaints.