hamster head - 1998

She dreamed last night of riding elephants through an ocean Crayola Blue and this morning she wonders what it means. If it even means anything. She's sure there must be some significance. Or at least she hopes. Because the hamster in her head, away for a while is back and running his wheel incessantly. She wants him to stop and sleep and dream hamster dreams and leave her some silence for productive production. As it is, she runs with him, counting her steps. She truly hates the running, the tedious jogging. Cages, too.

The same song flusters, dissonant through her, through her day. All day. And the next. And for countless following weeks. She's fearful of the years it could play, that the hamster will run Everready steady. (Is this how people go insane?) She'd prefer apathy and has attempted aromatherapy most recently to assuage the rodent. To sooth him. But it doesn't seem to work.

She likes the word, "sooth" rolling smooth through the mouth, aloe gel on sun-scorched skin. Remembers her mother's small hands sliding slick across her back to cool the burn after a day at the beach. She'd fogotten the SPF. Left it back on land next to the lemonade. Even after being reminded. Her own folly, but waves waved and she was scared she'd miss the big one. She's always been a bit single-minded.

The constant screech and click tip her off that something's amiss and so she searches, swimming through wax-drawn seas and in big bowls of alphabet soup, makes love to vice-presidents and has tea with her dead grandmothers. Sometimes she can't remember with whom she did exactly what and then she worries, because she's sure there's a point. Or at least she hopes.

and i don't even have to walk to the mailbox

If my great-grandmother, at the tender age of 16, could find the gumption to board a boat from Ireland for the new world, why can't I, a full-grown adult with all the advantages she never had, find the initiative to drive myself the ten minutes it would take to get my steadily expanding backside to yoga?

With all the energy and kvetching I put into moaning about getting there, you'd think the studio was, in fact, located on the other side of an ocean.

An ocean that I had to swim.

Through oil-slick waters.

In a sand paper bathing suit.

On a Monday.

And before I've had my coffee even.

Perhaps, if like her, I didn't have ready access to food, I'd feel more of an incentive to work toward achieving my goal of better health and wellness. Starting probably, with the purchase of a much-needed potato for dinner.

Then again, if I had less access to food (and certainly potatoes), my backside wouldn't be a problem and the whole yoga thing would be moot.

How horribly elitist is it of me, that I occasionally wish I lived in a time when life itself was difficult enough that one couldn't fathom actually manufacturing challenges to make it fulfilling?

How wrong is it, that one of the greatest trials in my day is remembering to mail in my latest Netflix?

Yeah.

Think about it.

Though seriously? I've got to remember tomorrow.

Because, dude, I can't wait.

Arrested Development is totally on its way.

And I so wish I were kidding.

have blog, will travel

When I started this site almost a year ago, most blogs I knew of were travel blogs, the narratives of friends abroad sharing stories with those of us handcuffed and hogtied to desks and domesticity. In response, I thought about subtitling my blog, Travelogues from Home. Because who says you can't have adventures in your own neighborhood, right? Well, I didn't. (Didn't name it that. Did have homegrown adventures : see archives.) I never, however, expected that blogging would actually lead to travel! But it has.

Well, kind of.

It's sort of a chain of events thing, really.

I start a blog. I meet the delightful and wicked talented, not to mention funny writer Jenny Amadeo. We become fast friends. She mentions she lives in Chicago (or so I gather from her site). I have friends who are going to Chicago in September. They say, "Hey, you should come with us to Chicago in September." I say, "Totally! Then I can meet my new best blog friend Jenny!" (Which was really not on their agenda, but they'd already invited me and couldn't take it back.) And then it turns out that the brilliant Brandon -- he of complexity, pathos and quiet humor -- has family there, or at least his wife Countess Chocula does and so we're having a mini-blog cum tequila symposium. Ta-daaa! Travel and tequila and I don't even need a passport. Blogging is so much more fabulous than I could ever have imagined.

Okay. Business, business.

Go have a giggle with Jenny.
Now. Heartstrings primed? Go check out Brando. (By the by, thanks for the traffic, boyo. First round is on me!)

over the lookout, can't get down

Fred is curled up like a cat in my lap, his body vibrating with nervous energy at the exact frequency of my guilt. I haven't been very good about getting either of us out of the house lately, to walk, to play, to interact with other living creatures. (The fleas that occasionally hitch a ride in the nap of his fur when he runs out too poop -- that I hunt like a vengeful god and quash mercilessly between my fingernails -- don't count.) But my brand of misery just doesn't like company. And while I take a certain pride in operating against the common logic, or at least the cliche, it does tend to leave one to dwell in an ever-deepening pool of self-propagating filth and swill.

Everytime I think I've turned a corner.

My father is a mess. Or at least he was for most of my childhood and young adult life. For years, the man made a habit of setting sail on an ocean of clear spirits, while the women-folk in his life (mother, sister, wife and daughter) strained on tip toes, bodies pressed against the rails of the widow's walk waiting for the barest glimpse of his return. And he would come back eventually, a briney mess. Or sometimes inexplicably jaunty on his own two feet. While other times, of course, it was by gurney or police boat. And then there were the occasions in which we received notice to go retrieve the pieces of him we recognized: at the hospital, at the motel, from the jail. Thankfully, never the morgue. Luckily for him, my thumb is the exact shape of his and we could always use it as an identifier.

And then, of course, the ritual clean up. The gathering up of vodka bottles and pornography cleverly stashed under couch cushions and in the basement behind the water heater, the tossing of maggot inhabited cookware, the sweeping of broken glass and the unquestioning acceptance of eloquently penned, though shakily written, apologies. Exhausting, all of it. Even during the good. Maybe especially during the good, necks perennially sore from watching for shoe clouds. At least after the rain, you can bow your head.

Eventually my mother, for her own sanity, and our general safety, gave up the watch, (though never I think the love that kept her there as long as she was). She was the first off the platform and two of us couldn't blame her. (I'll let you guess who could.) If we're speaking technically, however, my aunt tried earlier. But even the convent's walls couldn't shield her from the patterns of duty imprinted on her psyche by her own mother, her mother who in her last hour still desperately grasped at wrist and shirtfront to pull her daughter close to demand, "Take care of my boy." The next morning we pried those self-same cold, dead hands from the metal of the watchtower.

My aunt and I walked down the rickety steps to solid earth together, I think. I don't remember when exactly, or how. We never mention it, but I think if you asked, she'd agree.

Free of her mother, her brother and the convent, she went on to marry a man who already had three children of his own when they met and so they compromised on Bichons and later it became evident that his grandchildren are most certainly and quite definitively, hers as well.

So all is.

Well.

And good.

And that has always made me happy.

And then, at some point, I went back up. Again, I'm not sure when or why. On some level, I feel it's where I am now.

Waiting. Waiting.

Waiting. For Godot.

For God.

Forgotten.

But I'm not sure for what.

No father for sure. For life, perhaps. For love. Though I'm not convinced I'd know the shape of either on the horizon, let alone in my hands.

And meanwhile, my father is better. Or so I hear. (Grand marshall in this parade. Best man in that wedding. VIP guest at the hockey game, the regatta.) "Kind of guy who can fall backwards into a pile of shit and come up with ham sandwich," my uncle, my aunt's husband, always says. And he is. And we laugh, though mostly from relief.

Now that he's better, sometimes I think I should write him. (He's written me. Letters in bottles from the island on which we all used to live. Hallmark, speaking for him, thinks highly of me, but I'm not sure where they're getting their information.) On the other hand, I feel the ghost daughter without a pen. And he without an email account. I know that in his mind I am still five-years-old, perfect and full of potential and I would hate for my vestigial, flawed handwriting to give anything away.

a tribe for all times

I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of urban tribes. You know the idea that we city dwellers, far from the ones who birthed and raised us, form familial bonds with those we meet along the way. We adopt little sisters and big brothers, mother and father figures who oftentimes after a time know us better than the ones we call "real." We create languages all our own, share insights and understandings that anyone not of our tribe can't possibly comprehend. We laugh and fight and cry and help each other move from one tiny apartment to another for no payment greater than pizza and beer. We complain, but we also defend. We love.

I've been part of several different tribes over the years. And I'm part of one now. I think I thought, when I'd really given it any thought at all, that the past ones were no more than trial tribes. I'd been an itinerant loner, looking for her tribe, wandering in search of just the right fit. Just passing through, thanks, no need to inscribe my name in the family bible yet.

But then last weekend, I enjoyed a four-hour brunch with some friends from high school/college and it was as if no time had passed. The comfortably understanding looks shared over our iced teas, the familiar teasing, the same eyerolls of annoyance at the same irritants. The word delightful comes to mind and the rush of affection for these girls, if possible, more intense than when we shared our lives and living quarters on a daily basis.

And then that same night, I had dinner with my friends Pamela and Bill and their little girl to whom I'm allowed to play the adoring aunt. And it felt like home. Because it is.

And then after, I met with some others, others that I'd call my current tribe. And we laughed and drank and in a thousand non-verbal ways communicated our connection and I felt sorry for the couple at the table visiting from out of town. I'm sure they have a tribe of their own, but it wasn't ours. And ours would never be theirs. You see, he didn't get the joke about the coffee-maker. And she, she made her infant son wear a helmet to bed, so that his head would only ever be perfectly round.

Three tribes in one day. Not so bad.

And then it occured to me, that for all my complaining in years past and if I'm honest, the year present, I've got a tribe at work, too. Such smart, motivated, interesting people, who forgive my lack of corporate ambition and believe in my talent despite myself. I've got a few brothers, more sisters than I can count (truly exceptional women who've been confidants and mentors more objective than most) and even someone I'd call Uncle if he'd let me. We spend too much time together, and in truly stressful situations not to form the tightest of bonds. Sure it's all business, except when it isn't.

Which brings me to my friend Jen, one of those truly exceptional women from work, who only a few years older than I, has made an enviable career in PR. She's one of those people who makes miracles happen behind the scenes, who helps create a brand for a network or business, government or charitable organization and gets very little glory in the process. And she's truly great at what she does, which is why I sought her out for advice one day and was rather pleased to learn that inequibility in title aside, we spoke the same language and became fast friends.

When she moved to Sacramento a few years ago, to go experience a different sort of life, a life in which she's tackling the role of supportive wife and amazing mother to her little girl, she remained a touchstone for me. And I hope, at times, I for her. She's still part of my tribe. And so a few weeks ago, I was thrilled when she called to tell me she was pregnant again, this time with a little boy. She is, after all, the sort of woman who should have several children. She's just so very good at it.

And now, if I might digress a moment, I come to you, my bloggy friends. You are part of my tribe. Sure we don't know each other face to face, but over time we've gotten to know significantly more than each other's writing style. We've become for each other, I like to think, an invisible tribe. We support each other through the thick and thin of it, applauding successes and offering words of wisdom and comfort when they're needed most. After all, words, in our community are all we have.

Though, now that I've written that, I'm hoping that's not completely true. Because today, or tonight, or whenever you're reading this, I need more from you. I need your good thoughts and if you've got them your prayers for my friend Jen and her little boy. I leave it at that for now and when all is well, I'll share more. But please, send those good thoughts and prayers toward Sacramento. Think them, pray them, write them with all you've got. And know that in return, that you've got mine for you and your tribe now and for whenever you need them most.

notes on the next life

This week, in my next life, I want to be the girl at the coffee shop with the boy's name. In this life -- because I'm working on attainable goals -- I'd at least like her verve.

The part of me that's always been an old woman thinks that she may one day regret the cave drawing tattoo that runs the length of her left arm, though perhaps not the more delicate star on her upper right. The star that sits a few inches under a scab on her shoulder, the one she acquired after flying heels over handlebars a couple weeks ago, the one that matches the oval on her chin from the same flight. Or rather, the same crash landing. My inner poorly-permed and chubby thirteen-year-old thinks she's the most fearsome thing she's ever seen and yet can't stop looking. The now-me admires the bear hug she has on the moment, and then immediately regrets the use of the term "bear hug" because it's so grotesquely not the right image.

Last year, her hair was dreaded and blonde. Last week, it was as if a band of meth-crazed fairies had attacked it with pinking shears. Today, it's tucked away under a hat my grandmother would have worn, but she's now acquired a silver grill across the front of her lower teeth and when she smiles a pirate's tooth winks from one of her upper bicuspids.

Something old, something new. And just for the hell of it.

It seems to be all about balance.

Regularly, she takes to the park with a troupe of acrobatic poets who protest the war in Iraq by stacking themselves precariously on the fingertips, shoulders and kneecaps of their compatriots while reciting verse. I've never had the heart to tell them that their tights distract from their message. Color me callow.

She's been to West Africa to help the sick and shares the story without even the faintest breath of a whiff of self-congratulation.

She confesses to a dairy allergy and yet states, "But, you know, I don't have a need to be lactose intolerant."

She's given away the dress she wore to meet the Dali Lama and and admits regret, but sees it as a lesson in detachment.

She tells me that she thinks a group of us once met up at a show, but I don't remember the music she says we saw and I feel plainer for the experience I never banked. (Then again, maybe she's mistaken. And that would be unfortunate, too.)

Conversations with her, over the counter at the coffee shop, feel like really fabulous, but itchy clothes and sometimes, I can't quite hear her and I wonder if she's just a slice off from this physical dimension. A dimension in which I, too, have a nose piercing.

So I'll take her verve. And her seeming fearlessness. Her need to be no one but herself.

But, really, in my next life, I'd also like to be Latin.

deep like linoleum

I think:
I live my life in the heightened anticipation of a kiss that never comes . . . and without the chutzpah to so much as tilt my head and lean in.

And then, I think:
Wow, do I suck.

And finally, I think:
Eh, at least I've got all my limbs. And you know, cheese is good, too.

And I feel ever so much better.