i am hope

sleep

2012-01-27T01:29:00.000-05:00

It's mostly quiet
now, although occasional
moans and wails
pitch themselves down
the darkened hall
in my distinct direction.
The blue stars have turned
off. The window is open
to the cold winter night,
to wheels passing on
wet streets, a siren.
I am awake.

How doctrinaire you have become,
everything always leaning
into your lack. If only I could
orchestrate your soft rhythms:
mollify the monsters
and magnificent tantrums,
quell the voluminous time devoted
to your ripening.
Pacify the city night, ceilings
thin as wooden drums.
Sleep! Unfurl this rewinding mind,
lull the wakeful feet of
students' feet upstairs,
cradle my coughing baby,
my panicked little boy.

sewing, a wee obsessively

2011-12-03T17:44:00.000-05:00

I've been sewing a lot. Maybe a wee bit obsessively. I made two dresses for Genevieve over the last few weeks. But both are too big for her to wear now, and as we are leaving for Hawaii in a few days, I've now made a third. This last dress fits her perfectly, so she'll have one to wear on vacation. I made it out of one of Charles' torn work shirts using the tutorial here, but using a different pattern so it fits an infant. The sides of the placket on Charles' shirt were a little frayed in one spot, so I added some white pom-pom edging along both sides of the placket. But the dress still lacked something. The placket on Charles' shirt was very stiff, with some sort of reinforcement bonded to the fabric, and it made the dress seem starched. I had a long remnant of dotted Swiss batiste l that gave me an idea. In my late-night etsy surfing I had come across shirt dress with a petticoat underneath and I wanted to see if I could add it to the bottom. After some trial and error I figured out how to add it to the hem and then create another hem that folded over to make it look like the ruffle was poking out. I am so pleased with the dress--Charles said I've been walking around the house "fondling" it.

Because I've been sewing so much for Genevieve, Ike has gotten a little jealous. So I decided to make capes for him and Lola to wear when they play dress up. I had some green and gold fabric with little vines that I bought last year in the garment-district. I wanted to use it with dark green velvet. I found another post on Made that I used to make a pattern, but nothing prepared me for how difficult it is to sew slippery material to velvet. I ended up basting the whole thing together before I used the sewing machine. But it came out well, it was my first time using a flowery top stitch option on my sewing machine. Now I have to make one for Lola, in pink and red. But that will have to wait until after Hawaii.

monday morning

2011-11-28T13:50:00.002-05:00

the fleeting transformation stays with me

2011-09-03T14:41:00.001-04:00

We are in Quebec for the long weekend, and yesterday we had lunch in Old Montreal. On the way there we passed Galerie Elca London, a gallery exhibiting Inuit art.

I was immediately drawn to the work, and went inside, tugging Charles and the kids along. The work was truly magnificent, the images--particularly those with a mythic animal-human quality--have stayed with me. I see them when I close my eyes at night.

I am posting my favorite of them here.

1. Kakulu Sagiatuk, Fleeting Transformation.
2. Kenojuak Ashevak, Days on the Coast.
3. Ningeokuluk Teevee, Lumaaq, Legend of the Blind Boy.
4. Ningeokuluk Teevee, Hypnotic Owls.
5. Pauta Saila, Woman With Ulu.

More images can be found here.

You have so mild a way of being

2011-09-01T14:19:00.000-04:00

The light shouts in your tree-top, and the face
of all things becomes radiant and vain;
only at dusk do they find you again.
The twilight hour, the tenderness of space,
lays on a thousand heads a thousand hands,
and strangeness grows devout where they have lain.

With this gentlest of gestures you would hold
the world, thus only and not otherwise.
You lean from out its skies to capture earth,
and feel it underneath you mantle's folds.

You have so mild a way of being.
They
who name you loudly when they come to pray
forget your nearness. From your hands that tower
above us, mountainously, lo, there soars,
to give the law whereby our senses live,
dark-browed, your wordless power.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Book of Hours

the sublime

2011-07-12T11:16:00.004-04:00

The sublime has been lurking a bit around lately, appearing as some sort of visual response to the list of tragedies we've been witness to in the last month. My mind's eye seems to be seeking out images as a sort of respite, as though these images are the only real words I could speak. I found that even a google image search of the words "the sublime" itself was quite gratifying, and led to many more such beautiful--if not sometimes also perfectly terrible--images.

I am certainly breaking all sorts of copyrights to post these here, but I will list them in order. I wish I could hang all of these images together in a large open room. Or at least one of them over my couch--but then I'd have to pick.

Caspar David Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea (Der Mönch am Meer), 1808–10. Oil on canvas.
Chris Friel, cf20–coast 5, 2010. Photograph. Five-second hand held exposure, no editing (from Flickr).
Anselm Kiefer, The Sixth Trumpet (Die Sechste Posaune), 1996. Emulsion, acrylic, shellac, and sunflower seeds on canvas. (One of my favorite contemporary artists.)
Ed Lisieski, Landscape, 2007. Polaroid. (Another image gleaned from my Flickr favorites, by a photographer (and online friend) who lives in the PNW; I consistently admire his work.
Sophie Aston, Unfamiliar Skies IV, 1998-2003. Oil and Alkyd on Canvas. (Another contemporary artist favorite).
Mia Perlman, Gyre, 2008. Paper, india ink, tacks, paper clips.
Guillermo Casas Baruque, Untitled; rare clouds (nubes raras), 2010. Photograph. (Another Flickr contact.)
Georgia O'Keeffe, Red Hills and Sky.
Lilie-mélo, My Sky, 2007. Photograph. (Another Flickr favorite, this time from the artist and blogger who can be followed here.)
Sophie Aston, Territory, 2004-2008. Oil on Canvas

always with me

2011-06-10T12:28:00.002-04:00

umbra \UHM-bruh\, noun:
1. The invariable or characteristic accompaniment or companion of a person or thing.
2. Shade; shadow.
3. In astronomy, the complete shadow of an opaque body, as a planet, where the direct light from the source of illumination is completely cut off.
4. A phantom or shadowy apparition, as of someone or something not physically present; ghost; spectral image.

She leaned over me, dark and mother-warm, and I could hardly breathe in her umbra of cigarettes and gin.
-- Jonathan Strahan, Eidolon

The umbra - shade, shadow, uninvited guest - is invited in; as a dream, the guest becomes host to a sensuous pleasure that is all the more real for being an imitation, and all the more an artifice for being imaginal, "only" a dream.
-- Patricia Cox Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture

Umbra is borrowed from the same word in Latin, meaning "shadow."

wishing

2011-06-09T18:03:00.000-04:00

map three

2011-06-03T12:33:00.001-04:00

time is an anxious habit I'm longing to kick

2011-06-01T08:29:00.002-04:00

T U R N I N G

Going too fast for myself I missed
more than I think I can remember

almost everything it seems sometimes
and yet there are chances that come back

that I did not notice when they stood
where I could have reached out and touched them

this morning the black shepherd dog
still young looking up and saying

Are you ready this time

—W. S Merwin

* * *

Today is a normal sort of day. Today we will eat breakfast and lunch and dinner at home. The baby will nap in her bed, and not after a fit of rage in a restaurant. We will not get the car from the garage and heist wheelchairs and strollers inside, squeezing ourselves between car seats and stashing packages underfoot. We will not troll the blocks looking for parking, nor will we take a taxi. We will not go to the zoo or the museum or the toy store.

Today is a normal day. It is also the day my mother-in-law leaves. Her trip was rather uneventful this time, I didn't break down in tears or flee to the car to pout. But, because Genevieve had bronchitis, I didn't see her as much as I have in the past. Which says something.

Balancing kindness toward my MIL and kindness towards myself is a difficult act. The golden rule doesn't help when that-which-you'd-like-done-unto-yourself will inevitably cause displeasure when done-unto-the-other. I am left with a bewildering puzzle of a person--the woman who raised my husband--whose motives, sensibilities and mores are quite unlike my own. Her presence is like spending a week with someone scraping her fingernails across a chalkboard: I am forever trying to get out of earshot.

I have been waiting for it all to be over, and now it is. I am here. Now. I remind myself, I am here.

Being a mother is a difficult stretch for me in one way: timing. I am so not good at it. Left to my own devices I just do one thing after another with no reference to the clock at all. Deadlines--such as dinner at 7:00--would pop up on me unawares and in response I'd brandish a cereal box. But the responsibility of parenting weighs heavily on my breezy time-management policy. Naps must be taken, meals prepared, wet diapers cannot be worn all day without bursting out with sticky little gelatin globs. As much as it goes against my nature, I am now mostly, if awkwardly, Aware of Time. But this awareness is an anxious habit I'm longing to kick. (And I will, if I have to wait until the kids are in college.)

But I take breaks from this new regime. I lay quietly with the baby as she sleeps, I abandon the orderly charts, draw innumerable dinosaurs and volcanoes, read the same book five times in a row, lay on the floor whispering "ba! ba!" and, needs be, break out the cereal box. I am still occasionally late for church, and miss appointments. Because I am here, now. I am here.

{ p o e t r y w e d n e s d a y }

a little work here and there

2011-03-25T15:05:00.000-04:00

I'm supposed to work in my office, but the truth is often I'm just here to find some refuge. To sit in front of the quiet screen and think. Check email, check Facebook, or mindlessly search ebay for cheap Oilily baby dresses or Orla Kiely bags. I do work, yes, but I first need brain-emptying transition time. The three-month-old and a two-year-old take up huge chunks of my brain--feeding, clothing, soothing, teaching, worrying--and it takes some time for the mama impulses to quiet down so I can address my work squarely. And often, when I have finally slipped into work mode, a crisis screaming outside the door of my office pulls me back.

Today, this paragraph is the tail-end of a long transition of many interruptions. It's 3:00, and I was supposed be working since 11:30. Ah.

to post, at last, this archaic torso

2011-03-02T17:51:00.000-05:00

A R C H A I C T O R S O O F A P O L L O

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved beast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

Rainer Maria Rilke

* * *

I have long loved this poem. And many times I've wanted to post it for Poetry Wednesday, but was daunted by the enormity of the last line: you must change your life. It's intimidating to throw together a little blog post about changing my life, particularly following such a powerfully beautiful poem. And as a mother of young children, just getting enough sleep seems like a sufficient goal.

And yet I come back to this poem over and over, perhaps because it sums up my understanding of the relationship between beauty and truth. How real beauty--including the artistic creation of it--can peel away the static of our lives and put us more in touch with who we really are. It can make us vulnerable, wide-eyed and silent. At best we become a medium though which the mysterious beauty of world in which we live shines.

I would love to write more about this subject, but I fear if I try I will never post this poem. Instead I want to post something I read in this month's issue of the Sun Magazine. It comes from the Reader's Write section, which this month was about singing. The description of Murad reminds me of the torso in Rilke's poem above:

I met Murad in the summer of 2010, in Svaneti, a region of the Republic of Georgia. He and the other singers in the choir Ensemble Riho lived in villages at the base of the Caucasus Mountains, miles of snowcapped peaks that separated them from Russia.

I hardly ever spoke directly to Murad, but he conveyed a feeling, a way of existing in the world. Even if he had tried to explain his music to me, I wouldn’t have understood; we didn’t speak each other’s language.

Foreigners who had come before us had given Murad a nickname: the “Rock Splitter,” for the volume of his singing. I expected a large, hairy-chested man, but he was slight and nimble, with ruddy cheeks and silvery eyes. Between recording takes at our makeshift studio, he would stare pensively into the distance. A farmer, he spent his days under the sun, and I got the sense that he was unaccustomed to being inside.

When Murad opened his mouth to sing, his neck veins bulged, and his stomach grew taut. His voice was loud but also remarkably graceful. Something other than sheer volume gave his music its strength. After several days of watching him and his fellow choir members sing thousand-year-old chants and centuries-old tales of war and survival, I decided Murad’s power lay in his ability to embody and transmit history. He was not singing about himself; he was transforming his body into a vessel for the music, for the past, for the many people who had sung before him. That widening of the neck, those big breaths, that steady stream of immense sound were all a negation of the self.

At its best, singing is a selfless act.

Sarah Gibson
Providence, Rhode Island

work yet to be done

2011-01-19T16:02:00.000-05:00

F I R S T H O U R
by Sharon Olds

That hour, I was most myself. I had shrugged
my mother slowly off, I lay there
taking my first breaths, as if
the air of the room was blowing me
like a bubble. All I had to do
was go out along the line of my gaze and back,
out and back, on gravity's silk, the
pressure of the air a caress, smelling on my
self her creamy blood. The air
was softly touching my skin and tongue,
entering me and drawing forth the little
sighs I did not know as mine.
I was not afraid. I lay in the quiet
and looked, and did the wordless thought,
my mind was getting its oxygen
direct, the rich mix by mouth.
I hated no one. I gazed and gazed,
and everything was interesting, I was
free, not yet in love, I did not
belong to anyone, I had drunk
no milk, yet– no one had
my heart. I was not very human. I did not
know there was anyone else. I lay
like a god, for an hour, then they came for me,
and took me to my mother.

* * *

Genevieve is a little over a month old. She sleeps a lot and well–six and a half full hours last night. She nurses easily and less often than her big brother did at her age. She smiles often, usually when falling asleep. My only real difficulties with her being her need to be nursed every hour between 7pm and midnight and a complete refusal to sleep alone in her bassinet. She likes being held, and wants to sleep close to her father and me.

I wanted a daughter. I knew my second child was a girl in my first month of pregnancy– I woke up from a unexpected afternoon nap having dreamt of hot buttered bread, steam rising off the freshly baked loaf. I knew then I was having a girl. And yet since she was born I've found myself captive to a host of unexpected fears. When Ike was a baby I was not anxious about whether he'd be handsome man someday. And, of course, he is a very cute little boy. But he was a ugly newborn: his head was cone shaped and his face was squished; he had big creases under his eyes and he looked extremely grumpy most the time. I thought all this was very funny and adorable. But since Genevieve's birth I've found myself surprisingly anxious about her appearance. She has my pale, sensitive skin and her baby acne is much worse than Ike's was. She has what looks like a birth mark on the back of half of her left hand and I fear it will cause her embarrassment in junior high. I have watched the growing of her eyelashes, hoping they grow long and curly, unlike my short, straight lashes. I scan family photos on both sides of the family, wondering whose facial structure she has inherited. I did none of this with her brother.

It's ridiculous. I am abashed that I am so concerned about Genevieve's appearance when I was so disinterested in Isaiah's. And it places the struggle women have with their bodies, or rather–the love-hate relationship I have with my own–directly in my lap. I want to model confidence and self-acceptance for my daughter; to be beautiful by being at home in my body, not obsessed with its flaws or shortcomings. Which is just the kind of thing I can pencil in on the to-do list for tomorrow.

{ p o e t r y w e d n e s d a y }

muddled newborn brain and some thoughts on health care

2011-01-18T18:13:00.000-05:00

Today is my birthday, which was news to me. When I managed–after feeding the baby, Ike, and myself breakfast–to find my cell phone, a little alert told me that my brother had posted a message on my Facebook account wishing me a happy birthday. And I thought, Hmmmm, he must be confused. I felt my birthday was months away, arriving sometime mid-April. But then I looked at the date on the computer, and indeed it was my birthday. January eighteenth, the day after the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., as it is every year. What's more, before I went to bed last night a little alarm on my phone went off alerting me that tomorrow was the birthday of Leon Iragui and Amber Iragui. And instead of absorbing the information that tomorrow was my birthday, instead I thought, How odd it is that my name is Amber Iragui and that I share a last name with Leon Iragui (my husband's grandfather who died years before I met my husband).

But by now, 5:00 in the evening, I have adjusted. In fact, this blog post is my birthday present to myself. I have carved out a little time to sit here and write, which is a better present than any other I can imagine. Ever since Genevieve was born a little over a month ago, I have been composing posts in my mind. I have a whole handful of first paragraphs and one-liners to unload. I doubt, though, that I will find a way to gracefully include them all here.

So maybe I'll just try one: I want to say a word about health care. Which is a horribly dry way to begin. More to the point: I want to say a word about doulas, and how the services my doula gave me during both Isaiah and Genevieve's births in many ways far surpass the services doctors and specialists provide. No doctor would have promptly answered my repeated calls on the days leading up to the birth, walking me though my fears with a store of practical advice and encouragement. I would have been left floundering and worried, doing google searches and reading posts about worst-case-scenarios. And left to the devices of the medical institution, I would probably have had another induction and epidural. Instead, Genevieve came of her own accord, and I even managed to deliver her without pain medication. My doula provided the kind of support women need (or at least I need) to get through the scary and confusing world of pregnancy and birth. OK, I would have given birth both times without her, but the experiences themselves would have been much worse–and my health and perhaps the babies health may have been compromised. My doula provided information about ways to sit and exercises to do to prevent a second posterior birth. She gave me lists of home remedies to ripen the cervix, names of massage therapists and acupuncturists to help induce a natural labor. She got me into the tub each time the contractions began to find out whether they were the kind that would lead to labor. She helped me manage the pain of the contractions once they became so unbearable I was begging for an epidural. She told me I was strong enough to do it, even though I rolled my eyes at her each time. She helped me moan, walk, and answer the ridiculous questions the hospital nurses asked as I was transitioning (for example, "do you have any tattoos?" when I was moments from being ready to push Genevieve out). And she helped me nurse my babies afterward--which was especially helpful my first time around when Ike struggled with a severe case of nipple-confusion (he thought my pinkie was the nipple) before my milk came in.

I write this to illustrate something I've been thinking about. I'm a bit of a hypocondriac, and the difference between care for non-life-threatening health issues (e.g. colds, back pains, birth) and more critical issues (e.g. cancer, hernias, broken bones) leaves me somewhat muddled. What I need is support. Someone who knows me who'll help me sort it out long before going to the doctor. When I'm sitting and waiting in the doctor's office I often panic, wondering why I'm even there at all. I'm not dying, after all. My throat just kind of hurts or my baby's left eye is weeping. Do I need a doctor for these things? I'd like a life-doula. Someone who'd visit me at home (or at least be available by phone) to ask about how I'm feeling, peer down my throat, ask how much sleep I'm gettng and then say, "use a warm water compress" or "drink a glass of red wine" or "do this stretch ten times before bed each night." Or conversely, say, "you really need to see a doctor for that."

Wouldn't that be nice? It'd probably save a lot of money too. So that's my two cents about health care.

And now it's time to go make myself a nice birthday dinner.

the size of the smallest thing

2010-09-29T22:12:00.001-04:00

D I S C R E P A N C I E S

It has something to do with ugliness,
even more, perhaps, with aggression,
but horseflies inspire no affection,
even though they're superb pilots.

Maybe because once they were squirmy,
furry things, butterflies seem content
with their sudden beauty, no interest
in getting anywhere fast.

The small brown bird outside my window
has a lilt and a tune. Elsewhere, a baby
is screeching. Watch out, little ones,
there are hawks, there are sleep-deprived

parents, utterly beside themselves.
When I was a child I claimed a grasshopper
hopped over a rock like a rockhopper.
"He likes to play with language," my mother

told her friends. "He's so smart."
She used to hide money in a coffee can,
place it behind the wooden matches
in the cupboard. I swear I never stole it.

She was beautiful, as was our neighbor
with the red jewel on her forehead.
That there's so little justice in the world—
one of them believed, the other experienced.

To ants a sparrow might as well be
a pterodactyl, and a parrot just one more
bright enormity to ignore
as they go about their business. I've tried

to become someone else for a while,
only to discover that he, too, was me.
I think I must learn to scrunch down
to the size of the smallest thing.

–Stephen Dunn

* * *

It is dark outside, and dinner is over, and the dishes lay in the sink. I have a few more hours before Poetry Wednesday comes to an end, but I want to post this poem I found in this week's New Yorker while I still have time. I like its intimate stream-of-consciousness style, as if a pesky horsefly started it and then the discrepancies rolled out seamlessly. That is, until the culmination, which then strikes me as so thoughtful and deliberate if all the other ideas take shape, "I've tried / to become someone else for a while, / only to discover that he, too, was me."

I cannot recall a more difficult summer than the one now winding its way down amidst rainy humidity. Each dramatic, exhausting event followed closely on the heels of the one before it, and despite a full five weeks of "vacation" time, I recall only perhaps a handful of days that seemed like vacation. If anything I long for tedious regularity, a week without incident, drama, or emergency. The kind of week where I can follow through on planned meals and put in regular office hours.

Yesterday, in a furious attempt to make up for the all the "nesting" I've been denied due to the bedbug fiasco, I fell off a bar stool while drilling holes for curtain rod mounting. I managed to break my fall in ways I cannot fathom, and landed squarely on my behind—crying more from surprise and fear then pain. I called my doctor nonetheless. This is second call I've put in in a week, the first because the flu shot I received swelled up painfully and gave me a black-and-blue mark the size of a tennis ball. Even after the noxious bedbug chemicals were cleared from my apartment a few weeks ago, it has been nonstop drama here. A brouhaha staged by my mother-in-law takes the cake, lasting nearly two weeks and still ongoing. It has reached a level of absurdity that is the stuff of literary comedy. I fear, though, that this comedy will end in a standoff, as at the present moment I fear I wouldn't be capable of having a civil conversation with her. She's recently threatened to fly out here to force her will upon us, and every time the door bell rings I tremble with fear that she might have done just that. Lord have mercy, it's only the UPS man.

It all makes me want to scrunch down a bit more, find some place inside myself that is silent. Someplace where my mind doesn't lay hold of the pasta dried on the floor or the fruit flies circling, endlessly worrying about roaches and bedbugs and the length of curtain rods. Someplace where I am still and tiny: a me who isn't drawn into a power struggle with my mother-in-law or in a fit about getting things done(!) before the baby comes. There is a baby inside me, very scrunched, after all. And my body is her home for two more months. She is among the smallest of human things, and she cannot care about the fruit flies or her brother's far-flung pasta bunnies—and for the moments she is still me.

{ p o e t r y w e d n e s d a y }

I hope this is the last of it

2010-09-17T10:58:00.001-04:00

I'm sitting on my couch while my daughter squirms around inside and makes breathing feel much more necessary than I'm comfortable with. I just returned from a three week "forced" vacation (which was pretty nice, I'm not complaining!) while the 3-week extermination process for bed bugs took place in our apartment. I've been back two days now and I'm overwhelmed and exhausted. Here's the short and fat of it:

Since we got home, both Ike and I have had a reaction to the chemicals used by the exterminators-- sore throats, itchy eyes, upset stomachs, headaches and diarrhea. It turns out the last application of the chemicals was done by a different exterminator than the first two applications, and this last guy sprayed the place voluminously. I waited 6 days longer to return than is suggested for pregnant women and young children, but that doesn't seem to be enough time.

It is hard to know how to even begin cleaning this place up. All our clothes and bedding (all things we own with threads in them) are up in our storage space in Yonkers. I counted on Alba--Ike's babysitter and our housekeeper--helping me bring everything back, but it turns out her doctor just told her she needs to take it easy because of a spike in her blood pressure and blood sugar. She has been coming anyway, but I don't want her working too hard. (Kirsten, Dario and Christopher, my back-up plan for help, are in the middle of a move right now themselves and need our help with moving and babysitting.) The literature provided by the bed bug exterminators say you're not supposed to clean the chemicals off for two weeks to help ensure the bed bugs don't return, but seriously, I've had to nix that plan. I need these chemicals gone. We've rolled up the rugs because they are so coated with chemicals I don't want Ike to play on them until I can get them professionally cleaned. We are leaving the windows wide open to air the place out, but without our warm blankets and clothes (up in Yonkers!)--and without any control over the heat--we are freezing. This all makes our apartment feel like we moved into it last week and not three months ago.

Meanwhile the leak caused by the construction on the apartment above us (the apartment from which the bed bugs came in the first place) seeped into the bathroom and then my closet--causing me to lose a lot of clothing in boxes. Silly me, I didn't realize that the curious smell of sewer water in my bedroom was coming from my closet! The nasty water had already soaked two boxes of pre-pregnancy clothes and dried, leaving lovely yellow and brown stains, before I realized what had happened. Clearly I'm not being vigilant enough! This happened before I left for vacation, but when I came home two days ago I found the leak had spread to my office and a wet spot had formed on the ceiling above my computer, not to mention all along the wall adjoining the bathroom. Dampness in the wall had ruined some artwork I'd hung above my desk. Did I mention that the electricity was out in the room due to the water damage? And because there is no electricity I cannot check to see if the water dripping from the ceiling has affected my computer. Nonetheless when the plumbers came today to look at the problem they said they could find no leaks and we'll just have to wait until new tenants move into the apartment above us and see if the leaks continue (more patience and vigilance required!). This on top of the fact that the pounding from the construction had knocked off one of the glass light fixtures on the ceiling and broke all over the floor.

Because of the last exterminator's generous spraying technique, our Chinese lacquer cabinet is probably permanently damaged. He doused it in chemicals, leaving streaks all down the front. We looked up how to repair damaged lacquer, and all the hits recommended not ruining your lacquer in the first place since it's so difficult to repair. I found a book about how to restore antique Asian lacquer furniture, but it turns out it costs about $500 on Amazon. Luckily the NY Public Library has a copy, although it's in the research library that doesn't allow people to actually check out the books, in-house use only. Helpful.

And although this may seem like a small thing, dripping from the upstairs apartment's a/c units have literally covered our windows with dried-on drywall-dust marks from the construction, and I'm at a loss to know how to clean the outside of windows on the third floor. Did I mention the view is one of the reasons we moved here? Too bad we can't see much anymore!

In order to keep the bed bugs from returning, I need to caulk up every crack in this whole apartment. But of course, we need to wait until the wet ceilings dry (which, by the way, still smell like sewer water)--and for the construction to stop pounding and making new cracks--before we can begin this process. And then of course we have to wait for new tenants to move in to make sure the leaks don't return. Hopefully this all happens before the bed bugs return!

So far the bed bug situation has cost: $380 for dog inspection, $175 in laundry, $750 in dry cleaning, $200 for bed-bug-proof mattress covers, $750 for two tickets to Seattle, and about $600 in help (i.e. Alba) prepping for the extermination, and letting the exterminator in while I was away, and in the ongoing regular vacuuming that has to happen all the while. We are already at nearly $2000 in costs, I am not yet including the cost of the caulking and cleaning up of the chemicals.

Also, in the last two weeks we've learned that the suspicious protein showing up in Charles' urine is the sign of an incurable kidney condition called IgA nephropathy, which may eventually require dialysis or a kidney transplant. He is luckily in the "not inflamed" state at the moment, but with all the problems in our apartment I can't help imagining that his kidney is inflaming. Meanwhile, his best friend and indispensable co-worker Valerie, who was away on a trip to Peru, is now stuck in the hospitals there on dialysis because something (probably returned cancer!) has blocked her bladder and caused her kidneys to shut down. She is in too precarious health to undergo a CAT scan to find out what really is going on, much less an airplane ride back to the USA where better doctors could look into it. Perhaps in sympathy with both of them, my bladder has stopped working as well, and I'm hobbling cross-legged to the bathroom every 10 minutes or whenever I hear water running. Although I suppose this is really the result of my daughters increasingly large head pressing down on my bladder.

The good news is that for the moment the bed bugs are gone and I haven't seen a roach since I returned. Also, my doctor appointment went fine today and the baby seems healthy (although I am of course worried that these chemicals could be affecting her!). Additionally, the 2nd glucose test I took (the three-hour one where they force you to drink and nasty bottle of sugar water and then draw your blood every hour in the process of checking for gestational diabetes) came back negative, so at least I don't have that to worry about. And Kirsten, Dario and Lola are moving into our building today, so we'll be neighbors again. She is expecting her second in February, which is awesome timing!

I'm sure we'll get back to a routine in say, a few weeks or so.

bees, bedbugs, and process of making gold

2010-08-11T14:51:00.000-04:00

S E C O N D   D I D A C T I C   P O E M

The honey of man is
the task we're set to:    to be
'more ourselves'
in the making:
   'bees of the invisible' working
in cells of flesh and psyche,
filling
          'la grande ruche d'or.'
Nectar,
            the makings of the
incorruptible,
   is carried upon the
corrupt tongues of
mortal insects,
fanned with the wisps of wing
                   'to evaporate
excess water,'
                    enclosed and capped
with wax, the excretion
of bees' abdominal glands.
Beespittle, droppings, hairs
of beefur: all become honey.
Virulent micro-organisms cannot
survive in honey.
                             The taste
the odor of honey:
each has no analogue but itself.

In our gathering, in our containing, in our
working, active within ourselves,
slowly the pale
dew-beads of light
lapped up from flowers
can thicken,
darken to gold:

honey of the human.

--Denise Levertov

* * *

I am eating a ripe nectarine and the baby inside me is kicking. I am sitting at my desk, sunlight falling across my left shoulder and onto my glass paperweight, and I feel at peace: all my gathering and containing might thicken to gold after all. Which, considering the panic I viewed the world with yesterday when it first occurred to me that we might have a bedbug problem, is considerable. We still very well may have a bedbug problem, and I am waiting for the guy with the dog to call back. It's the standard way to detect bedbugs in NYC--you pay $300 for a guy with a trained canine to come, and the to dog sniffs them out with 95% accuracy. At our old condo building near Central Park there was a tenant with bedbugs and a cute beagle named Russell came and declared our apartment free and clear. Of course, at our old condo building we didn't have to pay anything, the management company took care of it and made sure no one in the building had bedbugs. Yesterday I was longing for that building, with its new wood floors, smooth walls, and general lack of bugs. I can't remember ever seeing a bug there. Here it's another story.

Ever since the lady who lived above us moved out and construction began, our apartment has been overrun with bugs. Ladybugs swarm our living room floor lamp. I killed a worm larvae inching across our bed yesterday. The night before I had Charles kill a mammoth flying beetle that appeared in my office. Let's not mention that scouting roaches that have appeared (and only a month ago I paid a roach exterminator.) And then, over the weekend, Ike began sporting a number of patches of bites on his arms and legs. Yesterday it occurred to me that these might not be mosquito bites he got at the park. He went to sleep with two bites and woke up with five more. I searched his room for a spider to no avail. Then I looked at photos of bedbug bites online. A perfect match. Ughhh. My lovely pre-war three-bedroom with river views went from being a haven to a hellhole filled with blood-sucking baby biters. I was suddenly very itchy.

Charles is not happy either, primarily because treating a bedbug infestation can be very expensive: at least $1000, not including all the washing and dry cleaning to be done. Alba and I stripped all the bedding in Ike's room yesterday and moved the bed, and this morning he woke up without any new bites. But I am still waiting for the dog guy to call. Meanwhile the pounding goes on upstairs, opening up little cracks along the seams of our walls, accompanied by the sound of plaster and Lord-knows-what-else tumbling down inside them. Sending all the little creatures down to us.

I have been feeling industrious lately. Perhaps the nesting instinct combined with the effects of reading Kristin Lavansdatter, set in fourteenth century Norway. Kristin is always sewing, weaving, spinning, or brewing ale. After reading about hot steaming bowls of porridge for the 30th time, I went to the kitchen and made some. Yesterday I filled the house with pitchers of water when the plumbing was turned off due the construction, and it felt almost like a treat not to have running water. Of course, Kristen might have had bedbugs along with the maggots in her straw bedding and that doesn't sound like a treat. Nor did the excruciating birth of her first son, where the men milling about waiting kept referring to her likely death.

But nevermind. I am thinking more along the lines of sewing some curtains with an electric sewing machine I'll buy on e-bay. Maybe making some throw pillows--or at most industrious--a little dress for the new baby out of material from the expensive shirt that Charles accidentally tore this weekend. Lord knows I think it's a grave hardship that I don't have a dishwasher or a washer and dryer in my apartment, I can't imagine having to spin, dye, weave and then sew all my own clothes.

Which brings me back to the poem above, about the task we're set to. To create--and to make ourselves "more ourselves" in the process--what is sweet, fragrant, and thick from all the minute gatherings of life. Lapping up from among the little things, making dinner or washing the dishes by hand, the dew-drops of light. "Active in ourselves" which reminds me of the Theotokos, and she kept all these things, pondering them in her heart, and turning them into gold.

{ p o e t r y w e d n e s d a y }

what's not a revelation is still worth repeating

2010-07-29T23:54:00.000-04:00

I need to go with my instinct. The more I think--the more I depend on reasoning and not on my gut--the more confusing life gets.

And I tend to think a lot, as one might well have guessed.

Here's a very current example. Ike has been screaming like a tortured animal at night again. This is no big surprise. We moved to a new apartment and then a week or so later we went to Germany and France. He returned from Europe not only to an unfamiliar home, but to a bedroom that is not adjoined to ours (as his room was in our old apartment). We anticipated this reaction. So when we got home I put a pack-'n-play next to our bed and we all got some sleep while Ike adjusted to our new apartment. But we've been back from Europe for three weeks and I think he's got the idea that this is where we live now. He plays in his new room happily most the day. So we put him in his new room to sleep two nights ago, and voila, he's screaming himself hoarse at bedtime. His face is covered with little red broken blood vessels from the exertion. Last night he went to bed at 7:00 pm and screamed until 11:30 pm. Sigh.

My gut says he's got to be gently weaned into sleeping in his new room. But my head, my patience and my husband say "let him scream it out, he'll exhaust himself and fall asleep. He'll adjust." He doesn't, though. At least not easily. My gut says I can't let him get so worked up when he needs to wind down. So tonight put my thoughts aside. I went to his room time and time again, saying the Our Father, the Twenty-Third Psalm, singing, leaving the door open, talking to him loudly as I did the dishes, soothing and soothing and soothing. I drew the line at physical comfort. And he only screamed until, well, 9:45 pm. And I'm exhausted.

I know in my head that he has to learn to fall asleep by himself. And every time I help him fall asleep I encourage him to depend on me to put him to sleep. But my gut says that if I gently move him toward more healthy patterns--even while depending on me to put him to sleep--that he'll move back to falling asleep on his own. And I think I have to just listen to myself, even if putting him to bed this way is time-consuming and exhausting.

My gut has a lot to say, really. It told me that Ike was a boy when I was pregnant the first time. And with this current pregnancy I suspected I was pregnant with a girl, and yesterday that was confirmed. It told me to walk out of the sonogram office last week, long before they told me it was against their policy to reveal the sex of the baby or allow husbands in the sonogram room. Of course I did walk out when I heard that, but I should have left before. My gut told me something was wrong with my second pregnancy, and I knew the moment I got a headache last September that I was going to have a miscarriage, which began a few hours later. My gut also told me marriage to Charles would be hard but worth it, which has been true as well.

I am writing this mostly to remind myself.

It's not so much that my gut is always right, it's more like my gut is me. It is me inside and out and takes everything I know and feel and believe into account. My head is about information; and while the information is usually factually true, it doesn't always apply in a useful way. My gut is also not my feelings. My feeling about Ike's screaming last night was that if he continued one minute longer I'd go in there and smack him one. My feelings usually revolve around comfort, anger, fear, pleasure, desire.

My gut uses the knowledge in my head, but conversely my head doesn't want to muck things up by acknowledging my gut. My gut registers my feelings, but my feelings don't want to take the time to deal with the quiet (and perturbing patient) certainty of my gut.

I know nothing I'm writing here is a revelation, to myself or anyone else. It's just that when I write it here it becomes more and more true to me. More and more alive and active in my life.

And that all said, I am so so happy to be having a baby girl!

old hands

2010-07-22T00:01:00.003-04:00

I N T R U S I O N

After I had cut off my hands
and grown new ones

something my former hands had longed for
came and asked to be rocked.

After my plucked out eyes
had withered, and new ones grown

something my former eyes had wept for
came asking to be pitied.

–Denise Levertov

* * *

I drove up to the seminary today. The campus smelled of the pine trees baking in the heat, of dry grass and, subtly, of Troublesome Brook. I know the smell of that place. I know the smell of the building where I worked for ten years, its damp basement, the smell of the cracked linoleum stairs in summer and of the sheepishly bearded students lingering in the entryway in winter. I know the smell of the copper beech tree under which the chapel bells are rung, and the smell of the concrete step behind the classroom where I used to attempt private phone conversations. The tired appearance of each as familiar as my childhood bedroom, their smells nearly as intimate.

Sometimes you cut off your hands because you need new ones for new tasks. Sometimes old hands just fall off over time, so slowly you barely notice new hands have grown. If anyone asked my preference, I'd go with the latter. But when I became a mother my hands were cut off rather quickly and new hands had to sprout. Well, they are still sprouting; I'm not entirely comfortable with them yet. They seem so awkward, scrubbed-red and impatient, these hands.

At the seminary today I remembered my old hands. I missed them. They had such a quiet, bookish life. Lots of time to think, those hands--and those eyes. The places those eyes had the leisure to linger! Too often I mistook that leisure for boredom. I remember this: I would be at Starbucks in Tuckahoe by myself, lonely, taking photos of whatever caught my fancy, and Jenny would call. She: "You're at Starbucks! By yourself! You're so lucky!" And I would smile.

I also think of this: whenever a new set of hands grew to feel entirely comfortable on me, they began to change. The confidence of being an old hand inevitably bringing about its own demise. A crude example of this is high school and college--by year four you've got your game going on just when it is all about to end.

Another baby is on his or her way, and I fear I need not new hands but a second set. But these are my only hands. And they may need another three years before they look as though they are at home on me. Let them remember other more bookish, carefree tasks; someday I will remember what they rocked today and smile.

{ p o e t r y w e d n e s d a y }

little pockets of love

2010-07-14T22:42:00.000-04:00

Today I am tired. It has been gray all day.

It rained all morning, the Palisades across the Hudson hidden behind a blanket of silver. I made a trip out of the house after the rain stopped to find the post office and the thick air hung in my chest and curled my hair. The clouds were low and heavy. The post office is at the bottom of the cliff that runs along one side of our neighborhood. I descended the steep flight of stairs down to the foot of the cliff, holding aloft my granny-cart full of packages to be mailed. I don't yet look unmistakably pregnant--more like a chubby mama with an expanding waist--but I felt unmistakably pregnant. Even going down stairs seemed to take a lot of energy.

I have been tired ever since we got home from Germany. I enjoy being home, completing the little tasks that bring us closer to being settled in our new apartment; opening the remaining boxes slowly, sorting drawers, making lists of things we need-- refrigerator organizers and molly bolts for mounting on lath and plaster walls. And even though the to-do list seems endless, I relish each task. Soon enough the apartment will be more-or-less in order, and while I like sitting back among my well-arranged furniture and admiring the art on the walls, I think I like working toward that moment even better.

Today I don't really have anything important to write.

Even before I left the post office I was dreading the stairs. I imagined myself getting up a eighth of them and sitting down for a prolonged rest. The post office is not far from the lower entrance to Fort Tryon Park. Leaving the post office, I headed in this direction and away from the stairs. The air along the cliffs of Manhattan schist seemed cooler, and the trees sprinkled rainwater on me in the breeze. I remembered reading that there was a subway station for the A-train cut into the rocks near here with an elevator that connected Fort Washington above. The article said that even on hot days this subway station was cool inside. I found the entrance easily, cut into the side of the rock like a hobbit hole. Cool air drafted out. Inside, a long, damp tunnel led toward subway and to the promised elevator. Ahhh.

Lately I've been thinking about the Nintendo game Mario Brothers we used to play as kids. I remember there were all sorts of places where you could manipulate Luigi to get extra points. Sometimes I didn't even know there were extra points on the screen, but somehow my brother would find them. Life seems a little like this, extra points hidden in all sorts of places. Little pockets of love hidden all along my way. Like the subway elevator cut in the rock that serves people passing through as well as those using the subway. Extra points for anyone, but especially for tired pregnant mamas wielding granny-carts.

I am happy in our new neighborhood. Being pregnant makes me crave solitude--I often involuntarily imagine myself lying on a blanket of moss under huge branches of a remote old-growth forest. No one around for miles. Hudson Heights and Fort Tryon Park is about as close as I'm going to get to this image in Manhattan. Not to mention that when I look out the windows of our apartment toward the Hudson, I see trees and river.

I ordered Thai delivered for dinner tonight. I gave Isaiah his bath and brushed his teeth. Charles came home with flowers. And just before sunset, the clouds parted and golden sunlight filled our apartment while the sky turned pink. Extra points I didn't even know were there.

* * *

M Y O W N H E A R T

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, lét be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room, let joy size

At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
'S not wrung, see you: unforeseentimes rather--as skies
Betweenpie mountains--lights a lovely mile.

–Gerard Manley Hopkins

{ p o e t r y w e d n e s d a y }

a quiet neigborhood erupts

2010-07-04T09:58:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, after settling into our hotel in a quiet neighborhood in München, we took a stroll. Everything was still. The streets had the look of charming, lively neighborhood, but no one was in sight. The restaurants and stores were all closed. We walked to the expansive grounds of the Nyphenburg Castle, which was all but deserted. We poked our head into the Museum of Mensch und Natur, which was ostensibly open, only to find the lobby turned into small theater and the staff sat glued to a large screen TV propped up near the door. The German–Argentina World Cup game had started, and Germany was already ahead 1-0. We were promptly invited us to join, and one of the staff member brought out some large paper and crayons to occupy Ike.

After about 30 minutes of the game, Isaiah couldn't be quiet anymore and we took him around the museum. A loud cheer went up in the museum when the next goal was scored. When we wandered back to the lobby the game was 2-0. We left the museum and wandered again in the still neighborhood. We found a beautiful chapel dedicated to St Mary Magdalen. The castle bells tolled loudly to announce the hour. We had been told there was a large beer garden, called the Hirschgarten, in the neighborhood, and we walked in its direction. It wasn't hard to find--a roar went up in what could only be from its direction when the next German score was made.

But the walk was longer than we had anticipated, and I needed to rest. We were sitting on a rock ledge when suddenly the quiet neighborhood came alive. Yelling came from all directions--homes, backyards, small neighborhood bars and, yes, the Hirschgarten. As we continued our walk, I got out my camera and videoed a bit of the celebration.

separate beds

2010-06-27T18:29:00.001-04:00

We are checking out of our Munich hotel tomorrow, and despite the fact that the elevator has been broken the whole time we've stayed here (meaning that at the end of a long day of walking around the city we then have to hoist ourselves up seven stories to our hotel room), I am going to miss it.

I have stayed in more hotels in the last two years of my life than the thirty-four previous years. And I have come to appreciate a good hotel room. The best hotel room we've stayed in by far was the boutique Hotel St Paul in Old Montreal. But as far as efficiency this little Bavarian hotel takes the cake. There is something very satisfying about the this spare but functional room. The hot water arrives immediately, there is a light over the little kitchen sink (yes, the room has a small kitchen attached), the internet is fast and free, the refrigerator stocked with things I'd actually eat, and the is foyer wide enough to accommodate the wooden crib Ike is sleeping in with plenty room to spare--not to mention a door between the foyer and the main room that provides a quiet place for Ike to sleep while we're still awake. When we arrived Charles immediately lamented the bed situation--two twin mattresses pressed next to each other. But as we leave tomorrow I think it is this feature I will miss most.

What ingenuity! Two beds! A natural dividing line to ensure no one ends up sleeping in the middle of the bed while the other hugs the edge. Two separate comforters so if toes are exposed it is no one's fault but their own. And the edges of these German mattresses are sharp, not rounded like most American mattresses, which enables them to sit flush against each other without creating and awkward gully down the middle of the bed. They seem to rest side by side on one frame, so they don't shimmy away from one another as twin beds pushed together do. And then these mattresses are firm, the pillows feather-filled and plump, the sheets high-thread count cotton. There are no silly satin throw pillows or scratchy blankets.

Munich is very nice, don't get me wrong. I could go on about the public parks with open-air cafés and live music, the swing-dancing under the pavilion in the Hofgarten, the hearty food, the elegant courtyards, the quiet trams and ubiquitous bike lanes, or the difficulty of finding food (or anything open for that matter) on a Sunday. But what this pregnant woman will remember quite fondly is this bed. And on that note I will go join my husband who is already fast asleep on his side of it.

you cannot put a fire out

2010-06-02T10:33:00.001-04:00

You cannot put a Fire out --
A Thing that can ignite
Can go, itself, without a Fan --
Upon the slowest Night --

You cannot fold a Flood --
And put it in a Drawer --
Because the Winds would find it out --
And tell your Cedar Floor--

Emily Dickinson

At 5 foot 11 inches and well over 200 pounds, she is a force to be reckoned with--despite the fact she can only manage to walk the length of one block and that with the help of a walker. She has a round face and beaming, child-like countenance, cropped dyed red hair, and wears colorful flowing clothes. She claims to have not worn a bra since her early twenties, undaunted by the fact that a bout with breast cancer seven years ago left her only one. A child of the 1960s, she finds it liberating to speak of sexual and gynecological subjects in unflinching detail. Yesterday was the last day of her 10-day-visit to us here in New York City and I am greatly relieved that my mother-in-law's visit is over.

Often when I am with my mother-in-law a tidal wave of anger surges through me, I want to yell or smash dishes: my arms long to heave something spectacularly shatterable across the room. As this is not a reasonable choice, a sulky and peevish mood instead takes hold and I begin to speak in monosyllables. I am soon overcome by a vague tiredness, finding any excuse to sneak off to my bed. But my mother-in-law doesn't particularly notice any of this, a bafflingly obliviousness to social clues is another of her signature qualities.

I do not get angry because my mother-in-law is mean, or purposely cruel. Nor is she manipulative or ill-willed. She is, in fact, quite generous and generally good-willed. I feel like throwing things because her curious inability to respond to me as me is nothing other than oppressive. (Well, that coupled with the fact that she is extremely demanding and assumes that we will rearrange our schedules to accommodate her without ever saying thank you.)

My mother-in-law's presence is a prodigious regime: she is a totalitarian country occupying my 12-square-foot living room. From the throne she's made of my antique oak chair (breaking under her immense weight) she issues decrees about what is best for all of us--when we will eat and what we will eat, where we will go and when we will go, what we think and why we think it. She manages this while unaware of any desire but her own, often without any actual supporting facts, and--bewilderingly--with complete sincerity. She repeatedly disregards Ike's sleep schedule, assuring me he can just sleep in the car, which particularly irks me.

Her regime thrives on popular novels and dramatic television re-enactments where poor minority women succeed against great odds. Thus, I exist for her as an idea of a daughter-in-law, and the idea of pregnant daughter-in-law is particularly compelling. Her compassion is roused, her sympathy lies entirely with my condition. My husband--her incredibly dutiful son--is transformed into the male oppressor. Suddenly there is a passionate drama taking place in our home and justice must prevail. She will overcome, a triumph for women victims everywhere. We will eat ice cream and burn our bras. Children will no longer hang from us crying for lunch. We are strong and beautiful and brandish our canes at honking taxi cabs.

By day two of her visit I had read every magazine in our apartment from cover to cover, mostly in the bathroom, where I found myself much more often than physically necessary. By day four all the waning symptoms of my first trimester had returned full-force. By day six, I began heading to bed directly after dinner offering no explanation. On day eight I burst into tears after a particularly excruciating meal with her. At this point my husband stepped in, and my time with my mother-in-law dramatically decreased.

I admit, my ability to handle my mother-in-law is diminished by my pregnant state. I am hyper-sensitive to everything. All my carefully thought-out attempts at compassion and largess dwindle after five minutes in her presence. In the past, I've been able to keep my sense of humor while with her, and even enjoyed gathering good story material from all the odd and preposterous things she did or said. (Too bad I wasn't blogging last time she visited, the ridiculous events of our night out at the Broadway production of Billy Elliot are well-worth the telling.) But now that she is gone I vacillate between great relief and disappointment in my handling of the situation. Primarily, though, I am in awe of my husband, he sees all her faults and yet always treats her with kindness and respect. In spite of her obvious rudeness toward him, he remains calm and engaged with her. He takes care of her without complaining and defers to her wishes whenever reasonable. I cannot fathom his patience. During my crying outburst on day eight, I sobbed, "It's a good thing she wasn't my mother, because I would have abandoned her to the wolves long ago."

{ P O E T R Y W E D N E S D A Y }

the view

2010-05-22T00:13:00.000-04:00

Not only have I had two days without much nausea, but my most recent diptychs are framed and mounted for the open studio tomorrow, and--most significantly--we signed a lease today for a new apartment! We're going to be renting a three bedroom with river views up in Hudson Heights (the neighborhood I've been pining after).

This wasn't an entirely foreseen turn of events, but as I have slowly felt less awful I also felt slowly felt more and more like moving. And the sooner the better. I was dreading the winter cooped up in these 600 square feet with an antsy toddler and an oversized belly. Not to mention that my tolerance for the more ghetto elements of our present neighborhood has all but dissipated.

So, on Wednesday evening I spent a little time on craigslist checking out the HH apartment listings. I arranged to meet with two realtors on the following day two see a number of two-bedrooms and one elusive three-bedroom. The first apartments I saw were dimly-lit, with awkward floorplans, and no views to speak of. The elusive three-bedroom with river views had been promised by a realtor who was having difficulty getting apartment access. He promised to meet up with me as soon as he could get us into the apartment. I wandered over to Frank's Market and bought a nectarine, Greek yogurt, a can of lemonata, and string beans from the deli. Then I walked down to the wall overlooking the Hudson river and slowly ate the beans. A line of trees stretched along the cliff to the north of me, along the river. Behind them stood a number of old apartment complexes. As I sipped the lemonata I thought how lovely it would be to live in one of these apartments, gazing out at the Hudson through the trees. Ike was home with the babysitter sleeping, I wasn't in a rush to be anywhere, and was miraculously without nausea. I felt cheerful for the first time in months, I didn't care if the realtor showed up or not. There was no one else on the street with me, and only one car passed the whole time I loitered there. As I was finishing the nectarine, the realtor called and said he'd found a way in, but I'd better come quick. Luckily the building was right around the corner from my little lunch spot. He escorted me up to the third floor (in an elevator) and opened the door to 3G. Immediately as I walked in I saw the trees: the two large windows in the living room looked out toward the river through the trees. And not only that, two of the three bedrooms also looked out to the river. The third bedroom was tiny and had a window facing south toward another building, but it was a real bedroom. The apartment wasn't pristine, and it was still inhabited by tenants, but it was old and grand and lovely. The kitchen had no window and was barely larger than our present postage stamp kitchen, but I didn't care. I wanted the views, the big bedrooms, the old walls with original details, the high ceilings, and the hardwood floors.

And today Charles met the realtor and signed a year's lease, beginning June 5th. Hurrah!

Now the work begins. I hope the nausea stays away!

boarded the train and there's no getting off

2010-05-19T09:35:00.004-04:00

M E T A P H O R S

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.

Sylvia Plath

* * *
It has been over a month since I posted and a bag of green apples it's been. At 11 weeks into the altered reality of pregnancy I think I may see the light: I only feel utterly miserable only three-fourths of the time.

I sincerely hate being pregnant. I thought perhaps that my first pregnancy was rather miserable due to the stress of two moves and four weddings. But the truth is: pregnancy just does not become me. I was speaking to a friend's mother recently, a mother of seven, and she told me she had so many children because she loved the hormones of pregnancy. She felt calm and peaceful while pregnant and nursing. After each child was weaned she dreaded the return to her normal self--so she just got pregnant again. And I concede that this is a problem worse that the one I am saddled with. Nonetheless, I think two children will do just fine for me: my mother-hormones tend to suggest things more like jumping off the roof of our 6-story building. I might as well ride out the remaining six months or so ahead of me lying in bed eating Häagen-Dazs lemon ice cream.

But ah! I am already a mother of a boy! There is no ride this out in bed. Ike unearths my hand from its hiding spot under the covers and pulls with all his toddler might, crying, "Go! go! go!"

Go, indeed. Go to the refrigerator and stand there, desperate to eat while despising everything I can see. Eating while pregnant for me means being so stuffed full of food that I couldn't take another bite while being overwhelmed by the urge to keep putting something--anything--in my mouth to ward off nausea, and at the same time detesting the smell, feel, color and very idea of food.

I am trapped in my body. I am trapped in a 5-block radius of my apartment in a suddenly distinctly ghetto neighborhood. The subway disgusts me. Our car is in a garage 9 blocks away. I cannot leave the building without ziplock baggies of candied ginger, saltines, apple slices, hard candies, a bottle of watered-down orange juice swinging on my arm--all to go 3 blocks to the grocery store where I will buy food that will then sit uneaten in the refrigerator because it is the most disgusting food I've ever seen.

Oddly, I am nauseated by colors too--particularly green and gray. I am nauseated by chartruese, forest, aqua, teal, lime, moss, putty, turquoise, ultramarine, beige, mushroom. Consequently, I am nauseated by the better part of my wardrobe. I am nauseated by Facebook. By my half-finished website. By my computer itself.

I'm sure soon, when the 2nd trimester finally takes hold, I will remember why I volunteered for this misery. But for now I am content that looking at my computer screen no longer completely turns my stomach.

{ poetry wednesday }

splinters of fire

2010-04-14T08:55:00.003-04:00

Having a child has done a lot to muddy the steel trap of my mind--if I ever had such a thing to begin with. My mental edge has long gone soft. Last week, running up the street to get our car out of the garage, I heard the subway train pull out of station on the track below the street, and I thought, "oh no! my car is leaving without me!" It took a moment to remind myself that unlike the subway, privately owned cars do not actually take off without their passengers. I remembered then the time when I was in high school, when my mother was telling us about something that had happened in an elevator, when she corrected herself and said, "whoops, not alligator, I meant to say elevator" and I replied, "But, Mom, you did say elevator!"

Perhaps motherhood, or merely being somewhat muddled, could be viewed as an asset. That is, reason--at least the steel trap version--can be, as Levertov says, "toxic in large quantities." These days I sometimes wish I had a bit more of this toxicity, but I am ever appreciative of the ways muddledom brings God closer. Splinters of fire, indeed.

C O N T R A B A N D

by Denise Levertov

The tree of knowledge was the tree of reason.
That's why the taste of it
drove us from Eden. That fruit
was meant to be dried and milled to a fine powder
for use a pinch at a time, a condiment.
God had probably planned to tell us later
about this new pleasure.

We stuffed our mouths full of it

gorged on but and if and how and again

but, knowing no better.

It's toxic in large quantities; fumes

swirled in our heads and around us

to form a dense cloud that hardened to steel,

a wall between us and God, Who was Paradise,

Not that God is unreasonable—but reason

in such excess was tyranny

and locked us into its own limits, a polished cell

reflecting our own faces. God lives

on the other side of the mirror,

but through the slit where the barrier doesn't

quite touch the ground, manages still

to squeeze in—as filtered light,

splinters of fire, a strain of music heard

then lost, than heard again.

{ Poetry Wednesday }

what falls within my circle: to dream, and to collect

2010-04-07T21:54:00.002-04:00

Charles and I have been talking about moving for awhile. We attend open houses, and every once in awhile I fall in love. Shortly thereafter I become frustrated we can't buy, and wish I'd never seen the place at all. It seems that we must keep waiting--for what exact moment I'm not sure: for the market to fall lower, for the enigmatic financial equation in Charles' head to achieve equilibrium, for there to be a burning incentive besides the smitten look in my eyes.

In our searches in New York City, I've become attached to a neighborhood on the North tip of Manhattan called Hudson Heights. It is full old buildings, playgrounds, a park with a medieval Museum (the Cloisters), a good public school, and views of the Hudson river and George Washington Bridge. But once again, I must maintain my composure. While I may want to proclaim my love for my new neighborhood, it is quite possible we'll never live there. I asked Charles the other day for the percentage of likelihood we would move to Hudson Heights. He said, "Uh, fifty-percent?" This wasn't what I was looking for, "Hmmmphf, I was thinking eighty percent would be more like it."

Sigh. So, instead I dream. I imagine up a future home. What I cannot have, I can nonetheless think about. And I can think about how I'd decorate it. This falls safely within my Coveyian "Circle of Influence," if little else does.

I find myself perusing the design blogs, particularly Scandinavian ones. I want to eschew cute and chic: the Dwell Baby catalog that arrived yesterday, for example. And avoid a gratuitous shabby chic. I want an aesthetic both functional and elegant; both grand and humble. In my mind's eye I see something older, a bit haphazard, worn at the corners. Ideally, I want the architecture (and the architectural details) to do the lion's share of the work, which leaves me with good artwork, old pottery and Scandinavian furniture. And a few bright pillows.

I share these images here because they inspire me, and also by posting them to keep them on-hand for whenever we actually buy a place and I can do something besides dream. The photos below I gathered from a few blogs in the last few days (mainly from Fine Little Day and Decor8). Disclaimers: 1. I admit my fascination with some of these images could be the amount of space (no apartment we could afford in Manhattan would boast such emptiness), and 2. I don't entirely share the Scandinavian love of vast whiteness. Enjoy!

bright week

2010-04-07T06:31:00.003-04:00

i thank You God for most this amazing
day : for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky ; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday ; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings : and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

E. E. Cummings

{ Poetry Wednesday }

pascha weekend

2010-04-04T22:30:00.002-04:00

It has been a busy weekend, but today--Easter Sunday--has been quiet and sunny.

Between liturgies yesterday we went to Fairway and stocked up on cheese and meat (Charles thought that hard orange cheese that looks a little like canteloupe was too expensive, but we bought it anyway for our paschal feast, and it is oh so worth it). I also painted some eggs for our pascha pail.

Today we feasted at home for brunch, had hamburgers at Duluxe on Broadway for dinner, and spent as much time between the two in Central Park.

Christ is Risen!

the edginess of the moment and the witnessing presence

2010-03-30T23:54:00.004-04:00

It has been miserable for two days, this weather: the kind that makes you want to hunker down and hope the refrigerator is stocked, make soup of whatever the bottom drawers hold. I love rain, I do. But not when it lashes at you, stingy, soaking all of you except maybe your head if it stays tucked closely under the umbrella. And that if the wind doesn't have its way with your umbrella.

And then it is Holy Week. But this week does not feel so holy to me. By some odd twist of fate three doctor appointments converged upon this week, a friend visiting from out of town, a playdate that can't be missed because I want to make friends with this particular hard-to-pin-down mom, and the usual homework assignment for my class. But I can't let my mind wander over to the list of things to do, I'll get up from my computer to add stamps to overdue bills, further packing my grocery list with lines scribbled in along the edges: "get egg dye!" and, "check for Rebecca." It's Holy Week, but it's miserable outside and I'm overbooked. Pascha is coming and I'm fretting.

Out on my errands today, crossing the street in the rain, I thought of something so obvious and simple that you'd think it'd already have etched itself on the inside walls of my consciousness: people are happy because they make the very best of what they already have. Not just in striving to have something better--a job more suited to them, an wider network of friends, a better relationship with their family--but in what they already (yes, oh joy, already) have. It's not that I didn't know this, it's more that it hadn't presented itself as a practice. Something to do, not just to believe.

I waste a lot of brain energy on striving, or anti-striving (which includes private mockery of the New Yorkers I think are striving too ostentatiously). I may get what I want, I may not; but Lord knows I don't need to think about it so much. I read these lines by Pema Chödrön in The Sun's Dog-Eared Page this morning:

"We become less and less able to reside with the even the most fleeting uneasiness or discomfort. We become habituated in reaching for something to ease the edginess of the moment... This is our way to make life predictable. Because we mistake what always results in suffering for what will bring us happiness."

Walking down the street, wind slashing rain across my glasses, I thought about the things I most want to change in my life, and I saw how so often I blame these things directly for my unhappiness, and then I thought about just accepting those things as they are. Not just in word, but in practice. To not ease the "edginess of the moment" by trying to fix them, or assigning blame, but instead to just to let them be. And, correspondingly, to be content--happy even--alongside these things, in spite of them, because of them, regardless of them.

And here, in observance of Poetry Wednesday, and in honor of Holy Week, in honor of the rain that is supposed to end tomorrow, in honor of my mini-epiphany in the middle of a wet city street in Harlem is my poem:

W I T N E S S

Denise Levertov

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.

washing the elephant

2010-03-22T22:16:00.001-04:00

Tonight the elephants march under the East River. A herd of pachyderms trudge into Manhattan through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel to Madison Square Gardens en route to their next circus venue. People line up along 34th street around midnight for a glimpse of the annual spectacle. Someday, when Ike is old enough, I will take him to see them. But it is raining tonight, and lightening sends shadows along the darkened wall of my bedroom.

Yesterday I read a poem in this week's New Yorker titled "Washing the Elephant." It was a longish poem, and it seemed disjointed at first. But it hung there in the air after I finished it, unraveling itself, and with it my heart. I remembered my own elephant, that is, an elephant of memory. A man who held the phone out the window of his tiny apartment to let me hear the thunder crack in a city on the other side of the globe. But I'll back up. Getting a divorce in your late twenties can leave you reeling, at least it left me so. The tidy force of my life suddenly swinging in all directions, it took three years to feel the earth solid under me again. Gone was the simplicity of romantic love, and in its place a frighteningly open place inhabited by all kinds of emotions and experiences. You doubt yourself after a divorce, and you don't want to make the same mistake again--and there is a lot of trial and error involved in the process of not making the same mistake again. By the time I met my now-husband, Charles, this process had left my heart a little pock-marked.

Charles once told me that women need a romantic story about meeting the love-of-their-life. I agree with him, although it annoyed me a little when he said it. But when you get divorced, and then you date for five years, and you fall in love with some of the people you date, you might get confused about how the story is going to go, and whether you know what love is anymore. You might start imagining up a story, a brilliant story full of twinkling lights and meaningful glances. And after awhile that story is a good deal more compelling than the people you are dating.

Which brings me back to why my heart was unraveling there in my living room. Because what I imagined for myself was not how things turned out. Not the way I'd imagined it when I was 24 and getting married to my college boyfriend, not when I was 28 and divorcing that same boy, not when I was 32 and tiring of the New York dating scene. None of those grand stories panned out. Instead I have this everyday reality: fragile, tenacious, beautiful, conflicted. And I have my memories, which on occasion may need some washing.

W A S H I N G T H E E L E P H A N T

by Barbara Ras

It isn't always the heart that wants to wash
the elephant, begging the body to do it
with soap and water, a ladder, hands,
in tree shade big enough for the vast savannas
of your sadness, the strangler fig of your guilt,
the cratered full moon's light fuelling
the windy spooling memory of elephant?

What if Father Quinn had said, "Of course you'll recognize
your parents in Heaven," instead of
"Being one with God will make your mother and father
pointless." That was back when I was young enough
to love them absolutely though still fear for their place
in Heaven, imagining their souls like sponges full
of something resembling street water after rain.

Still my other sent me every Saturday to confess,
to wring the sins out of my small baffled soul, and I made up lies
about lying, disobeying, chewing gum in church, to offer them
as carefully as I handed over the knotted handkerchief of coins
to the grocer when my mother send me for a loaf of Wonder,
Land of Lakes, and two Camels.

If guilt is the damage of childhood, then eros is the fall of adolescence.
Or the fall begins there, and never ends, desire after desire parading
through a lifetime like the Ringling Brothers elephants
made to walk though the Queens-Midtown Tunnel
and down Thirty-fourth Street to the Garden.
So much of our desire like their bulky, shadowy walking
after midnight, exiled from the wild and destined
for a circus with its tawdry gaudiness, its unspoken
pathos.

It takes more than half a century to figure out who they were,
the few real loves-of-your-life, and how much of the rest--
the mad breaking-heart stickiness--falls away, slowly,
unnoticed, they way you lose your taste for things
like popsicles unthinkingly.
And though dailiness may have no place
for the ones who have etched themselves themselves in the laugh lines
and frown lines on the face that's harder and harder
to claim as your own, often one love-of-your-life
will appear in a dream, arriving
with the weight and certitude of an elephant,
and it's always the heart that wants to go out and wash
the huge mysteriousness of what they meant, those memories
that have only memories to feed them, and only you to keep them clean.

{ P O E T R Y W E D N E S D A Y }

these hills are too green & sweet to have tasted salt

2010-03-17T22:32:00.001-04:00

I am squeezing this post in before the lovely Poetry Wednesday ends. It's been a busy day, and only now, after Presanctified and take-out sushi, am I able to sit at my computer. It is quiet in our little living room: just the sounds of typing and clicking as Charles and I sit with our laptops, mugs of tea side by side on the coffee table.

Wednesdays go like this: I leave the house early for my DreamWeaver class at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) on 23rd and Lexington. After my four and a half hour class, I take the subway back uptown to 125th Street in Harlem and work-out at the gym. Then I walk 14 blocks home, usually stopping along the way at the bank and/or grocery store. At home I pay the nanny, make sure Ike is fed, and load the stroller with toys and snacks to get us through Presanctified. The church is a 10-minute walk, and Charles meets us there at 6:30. Half way through service I stroll around the neighborhood with Ike and place a take-out order at one of the Chinese or Japanese or Thai restaurants in the area. I return to church, put Ike in his PJs, take communion, and then head home, picking up our take-out order on our walk home. I have gotten so used to this schedule that I am sad that next week will be the last Presanctified service of Lent.

All this has nothing really to do with the poem I'm posting today, except it may explain why I am posting another Plath poem with little ceremony. My Wednesday schedule, added to the fact that I didn't write my post on Tuesday night, leaves me here, at 10:15 pm on a quiet Wednesday evening, with Blackberrying.

And it is a poem I love. In its fullness and its sadness: the lushness of the green hills and the cold metallic expanse of the sea. I suppose it's no stretch to say that the sea is a metaphor for death, just as the ripe berries are a metaphor for life.

B L A C K B E R R Y I N G

by Sylvia Plath

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,

Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,

A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries

Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes

Ebon in the hedges, fat

With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.

I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.

They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks—

Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.

Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.

I do not think the sea will appear at all.

The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.

I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,

Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.

The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.

One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.

From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,

gapping its phantom laundry in my face.

These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.

I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me

To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock

That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space

Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths

Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

what I know with my head doesn't help

2010-03-12T20:50:00.016-05:00

Sometimes, for a few brief seconds, I can see my life from the outside. I'll be minding my own business, trying to coax Ike into saying his final "goodbye" to the smiling monkey doormat in front of our neighbor's apartment, so we can finally enter the elevator--and then suddenly some part of me is up on the stairwell, looking down at us. The moment comes and goes quickly, gone the second I notice it's happening. But I'm left with the flavor of what it would be like to be outside the small world of my mind. No longer an inhabitant of Wife, Mother, Designer, Tyrant of a Minute Domestic Realm, no longer fighting time and my own anxieties and fears.

Oddly, though, in those moments I don't look at myself and say, "Oh, what a pathetic mess! My God, woman, lose 20 lbs, get something moving with your career, be more assertive, more creative! Really." What I'm left with after these moments is usually a sense of space, of strength, even gratitude. I see the opportunities in front of me and feel, if only for a few minutes, that stepping into them would be simple. I find that I am free from the accordion-like expansion of my list of chores and faults.

It's like a mini-vacation, and I wish I could take one everyday.

And then it occurs to me, since it is Lent and I should be attempting some sort of spiritual life, that this is more or less what prayer offers. And I could do it everyday. Not the nearly-mechanical prayers offered before work, meals, or bed. But the kind of prayer that comes from making space inside myself for God, and surrendering the consequences of such space. Of the joy in what I have right now, instead of pining after a neighborhood we do not yet live in, for local friends I do not yet have, for creative recognition for projects yet incomplete.

I know and yet I do not know. It is the time-honored dilemma: I know with this my head and not my heart. And it's not more knowledge that will make the difference in my life-- dear brain forever whirling around itself--but more prayer. More space for God: God inside me, inside Ike, and even inside the smiling monkey doormat. God is here, now. That's the point. I keep losing sight of God, and correspondingly, of myself.

this is what life is all about

2010-03-10T07:14:00.001-05:00

photo diptych © Bree Walk, used by permission

C H I L D
by Sylvia Plath

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new

Whose names you meditate –
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.

* * *

Julia once commented that liking Sylvia Plath is ever so slightly undergraduate. And Plath does bring to mind oversized flannel shirts and doc martens, sitting with one foot tucked under me at my favorite window in the university library, the window overlooking the flowering magnolia. Reading a book of her poems by that window, I wrote: "this is what life is all about" in the margin next to the poem, Black Rook in Rainy Weather.

Plath is a confessional poet. There is no persona dividing her from her subject; her experience is the subject, and that experience is often dark. I cannot read her without mental reference to her suicide. Now that I have my own child, her suicide--sticking her head in an gas oven with the pilot light out--is even more incomprehensible: her two young children were sleeping in the next room. But gothic drama aside, I am drawn to the luminescence also undeniably present. So many of her poems (like Child posted above) are full of light. Shininess, even. And perhaps their brightness is all the more compelling because of their juxtaposition with that which is not: Not this troublous / Wringing of hands, this dark / Ceiling without a star.

The darker side of life is not something I shirk from. I suspect this is in my nature. It's not that I want grief as much as I am uncomfortable with secrets and things left unsaid. I am repelled by inauthenticity, in myself or in others. And this is likely why Plath is so appealing. Her poems, for all their darkness, ring true to me. The saltiness to everything, the quiet despair alongside the abundance, the bright cleanness of her words like the open gaze of friendship.

Although I am now tempted to post my two other favorite Plath poems here, I think I will save them for upcoming Poetry Wednesdays.

where memories lay, unordered but so bright

2010-03-03T22:28:00.003-05:00

F R O M H E R E TO T H E R E

Naomi Shihab Nye

Everything need readiness,
baskets emptied,
gladiolus spear placed in
a glass.

Before you begin,
before you let yourself move,
from here to there,
you attend to little things,
a cat's mouth open and crying,
a thin parade of ants
along the sill.

Something in the way we are made
wants order. Wants three pillows
lined across the head of the bed,
wants porches swept and shades raised.

Before we begin. Before we head into
those secret rooms no one else
has cleaned for years,
where memories rest in heaps,
without cabinets,
and have only to be touched lightly
to shine.

{ Poetry Wednesday }

the creative momma blogosphere, I fear

2010-03-02T16:17:00.001-05:00

Last weekend I knit a pair of pink fingerless mitts for a friend's daughter. They turned out so well I took a photo before I gave them to little Sasha. Also in the mail came two vintage children's books I bought second-hand. I was disappointed in the text of both books (Baboushka and the Three Kings particularly). Nonetheless I purchased the books for their artwork, and in that respect I was not disappointed. Both are delightfully illustrated. White Snow, Bright Snow, printed in 1947, captures people working in (and out of) the snow in stereotyped roles you'd never find in a contemporary children's book, e.g. the farmer, the postman, the policeman, the policeman's wife (here, contentedly knitting beside his sickbed).

I post these things here with this disclaimer: I may be a momma, and I may be creative, and undoubtedly I have my own blog, but I nonetheless fear the creative momma blogosphere. Fear might be too strong a word. It's just that surfing around these artist-momma blogs inevitably causes me a bout of self-doubt. I don't own a polaroid camera, have an esty store filled with felt owls or Amy Butler print hobo bags, or grow my own vegetables. I have my most creative thoughts after I get into bed at night and by the morning they get lost in the shuffle of errands and work. Just posting to a blog is about all I can manage.

epithalamium

2010-02-24T08:23:00.002-05:00

I've been married five times, four times to the same man. My second husband, Charles, and I got married in bits. We were legally joined at 8:00 AM on New Years Eve at New York City Hall, after standing in line outside in the bitter cold. We roped a friend visiting from out-of-town into being our witness--nearly everyone else we knew was on vacation. We were crowned with tropical-flower leis in the church a few weeks later at Juvenaly's Orthodox Mission in Kona, Hawaii. Afterward we sipped champagne with dear friends and looked out at the sea. To include our local parish and friends (now all returned to NYC from vacation), our marriage was then blessed a few days after Valentine's at St Mary Magdalen's Orthodox Church on the Upper West Side. And then, when I'd really had enough of these weddings, we celebrated with family (and a number of taxidermic creatures) in a spare one-room schoolhouse on the high plains south of Denver, Colorado. Elk, salmon, and a number of awkward toasts, were served.

I recite all this in some way to explain why I chose the poem by Matthew Roher below. So much of our first year of marriage was spent in external activities and events. There was so much to plan, to do, to adjust to. I sometimes forgot the man I'd fallen in love with, who teased me in courtyard at the Cloisters and then pointed out the subtle s-curve in a wooden scupture of the Virgin Mary. Under all the shiny things we did that first year, under all the weddings, moves, stresses, presents, and purchases, something was hidden. Something known barely to ourselves, this thing that grows from two lives lived side-by-side. In the solitude of our own hearts, and in the often dogged discussions we had about life and our life together, a space was plotted and a garden planted.

By the way, an epithalamium is a poem written in honor of the bride and groom.

E P I T H A L A M I U M

In the middle garden is the secret wedding,
that hides always under the other one
and under the shiny things of the other one. Under a tree
one hand reaches through the grainy dusk toward another.
Two right hands. The ring is a weed that will surely die.

There is no one else for miles,
and even those people far away are deaf and blind.
There is no one to bless this.
There are the dark trees, and just beyond the trees.

by Matthew Roher

{ Poetry Wednesday }

hospital corners solve nearly everything

2010-02-19T22:55:00.001-05:00

In what may be a futile attempt to curb my so-called "baby fat," I recently joined the New York Sports Club, after having been sold on the $5/hour babysitting service on the premises.

I put off joining a gym for quite awhile because there were none within a reasonable walking distance. But this gym is only 2 stops away on the subway and I can get to there in less than 10 minutes, that is, if I don't take Ike. If I take Ike, well, it's a 30 minute one-way commute, what with stopping to investigate doggy-poo, ubiquitous chicken-bone litter, and all siren-blaring vehicles. (Not to mention the awkward maneuver through the subway turnstile; Ike often exclaims "oh wow!" when we get to the other side, as if surprised we succeeded.) Nonetheless, I was quite keen on returning to a exercise routine.

Our first trip to the gym was invigorating. I congratulated myself on being such an active mother, envisioning my pre-baby clothes fitting again. But my son had a different response. Isaiah decided that being stuck in a room with 5 other toddlers watching Dora the Explorer while his mother disappeared into a loud gym pulsating to P. Diddy was absolutely unacceptable. So on our next visit he did what he does when things are unacceptable--he threw a tantrum.

I was summoned back to the nursery only to find Ike plastered to the glass door, screaming at the top of his lungs. He calmed down when he saw me, and we sat together for 20 minutes or so. I managed to continue my work-out in 10-minute spurts, punctuated by leisurely rest-and-reassurance sessions in the nursery. Of course, this ensured our stay at the gym lasted three times as long as necessary. I tried the nursery again a few days later, in the hope that the last visit was an anomaly. But Ike's second screaming spell was more intense than the first, and I was obliged to call my babysitter to come up and get him so I could work-out.

Not one to give up hope, I tried again this morning. But Ike started shrieking before we even got into the nursery, and with no babysitter back-up, I turned around and made the laborious trek back home. Promptly upon arriving home I finished off a chocolate bar in frustration--just the thing to console myself over an unsuccessful trip to the gym.

But I came out of my funk, made the bed--replete with taut hospital corners--, fed my son lunch and put him down for a nap. Then I did some leg-lifts and crunches on the living room floor.

world was in the face of the beloved

2010-02-17T21:09:00.003-05:00

World was in the face of the beloved–,
but suddenly it poured out and was gone:
world is outside, world can not be grasped.

Why didn't I, from the full, beloved face
as I raised it to my lips, why didn't I drink
world, so near that I could almost taste it?

Ah, I drank. Insatiably I drank.
But I was filled up also, with too much
world, and, drinking, I myself ran over.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Uncollected Poems
translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell

{ Poetry Wednesday }

japanese owl bowls

2010-02-16T16:53:00.000-05:00

In college, I appropriated some lovely Japanese rice bowls from an friend's brother's ex-girlfriend. One by one they've broken, and I've been looking for rice bowls I like enough to replace them. You can see three of them on the shelf in the top photo.

In SoHo for our Valentine getaway, Charles and I went into a number of Japanese stores. I found these little owl bowls and I loved them right away.

Charles was not in love with them because they cost a good deal more than the standard blue patterned Chinese rice bowls, but alas, it was Valentines and he loves me.

a love poem

2010-02-10T13:35:00.000-05:00

Getting to Know You
Ruth Stone

We slept into one another.
The mattress sloped us to your side.
We shared three daughters.
Miraculous dull day to day
breakfast and dinner.

But compared to all the optic scanning
the nerve ends of retrospection
in my thirty years of knowing you
cell by cell in my widow's shawl,
we have lived together longer
in the discontinuous films of my sleep
then we did in our warm parasitical bodies.

Thus, by comparison, when the palms
of our hands lay together exchanging oils
and minuscule animals of the skin;
we were relative strangers.

* * *

Looking for a poem about love was harder than I imagined. I felt drawn to poems about the loss of love or the fleetingness of love more than to the celebration of it. I was tempted to put up a poem about a tomato by Pablo Neruda that was both loving and erotic. But in the end this sad but lovely poem by Ruth Stone won me over.

The poem strikes me precisely because romantic love is often held aloft by a perception of the beloved may or may not reflect reality. The love written of in the poem, sustained through a thirty-year-long widowhood, is beautiful; yet it shares this same characteristic. The beloved is long gone, and yet the love remains, growing and shaping dreams and memories.

Friends are delightful. I think I should get some.

2010-02-08T23:34:00.002-05:00

I have been experimenting with having an online sketchbook, but now that I've had it up for a few months, it seems unnecessary. I might as well just put all the words and the images in the same place. Did this sketch after dinner tonight, put on water for tea and forgot about it because I got so involved in the colors.

I was all despairing this morning, and stayed that way until Jenny woke up in Hawaii and called me. Friends are delightful. I think I should get a few more of them, at least local ones. Here is my advertisement for local friends:

Mid-thirties SoHa MWF with 18 MO son seeks like for friendship, support, shopping, and occasional CC swapping. Prefer bookish and/or artsy, spiritually-inclined (tho not particularly toward Islam), with laid-back style. Don't have energy for helicopter-parenting or much advice-giving. Near 2, 3, C, B trains and two lovely playgrounds.

a lake of cowardly souls

2010-02-05T22:41:00.000-05:00

So much to say that can't be said.

Not here, at least. Not in words. I suppose this is why I take photographs; writing is so definite, so tidy. And the process takes a lot of courage, and often it just doesn't work. I stewed all morning about a dream, for example. A dream that made no sense, yet felt so important. If I wrote it here it would gather shape and particular meaning, and at the same time lose much of its mythic significance. It would be a petty human dream.

Enough.

Let's write about courage instead. So much of life takes courage. And courage is not one of my strong suits. I used to have a strip of tape stuck to the inside of my front door with the word "courage" written on it. In fact, I posted a photo of it here on this blog. Maybe I was more courageous back then, but I doubt it.

Long, long ago--in my second year of undergraduate studies--I transferred to a Bible school. Now that was courageous. I was utterly miserable at the Bible school, though, and sensibly returned the following year to the sedate and dignified Catholic university I had previously attended. But misery aside, I gained a lot in that one year. For example, one sermon preached at chapel lodged itself in my brain. It was about courage. The somewhat timid graduate student who was preaching that day took his text from the book of Revelation:

The cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death. (Revelations 21:8)

This is a very bothersome verse, not even considering the fact of a fiery lake of burning sulfur. If we concede such a lake, I assume that it would be teeming with the vile and murderous, witches and warlocks, baby-killers and baby-sellers, and the like. But the cowardly? That worries me. And so it worried the student who preached the sermon--why would the merely cowardly be listed with these other seriously reprobate types?

You begin to consider adding "courage" to your New Year's resolutions. Or just to your door for that matter.

I am not courageous. I have been hiding out from an elderly lady who I told I would help. She is a rather insistent old lady for whom "no" is not an acceptable answer, and to her great benefit she is also increasingly deaf. However, I thought because she lives a great distance from me I was more or less safe. But she and her family have shown up at my parish the last few Sundays. I spent both Sundays hiding in the back of the church, visiting the restrooms, and inventing various reasons to be invisible. This is not the first time I've had to do this sort of thing. I've found myself hiding in restrooms many times in my cowardly life.

Charles and I are reading the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. No need to say, cowardice is not one of them. Not only that, but it seems you need courage to be effective. Every other habit seems to require courage. Avoiding conflict, wishing people could read my mind, leaving unpleasant truths unsaid, and hiding in bathrooms are not only going to eventually land me in a lake of burning sulfur, but they make my life right now more or less ineffectual. Sigh.

So I write to gain courage. Putting words to print, and then pressing the publish button, commits me. If I write with more bravery, honesty, I may in fact gain some of that bravery in the day-to-day actions of my life. I cannot say it all, it's true. My dreams may be best unwritten. But in many ways I become the person I write about. Here I face my cowardice, revealing its silliness and vanity, and here also find a surer heart and a broader smile.

plucking the fruit

2010-02-03T21:50:00.007-05:00

O T A S T E A N D S E E

Denise Levertov

The world is

not with us enough.

O taste and see

the subway Bible poster said,

meaning The Lord, meaning

if anything all that lives

to the imagination's tongue,

grief, mercy, language,

tangerine, weather, to

breathe them, bite,

savor, chew, swallow, transform

into our flesh our

deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,

living in the orchard and being

hungry, and plucking

the fruit.

* * *

The first stanza of Levertov's poem has been coming to mind often lately, perhaps because I've been riding the subway more often, or--more likely--because Lent is coming.

I hum the hymn from Presanctified liturgy, and remember the packed line for communion at the service I used to attend at the seminary. I was hungry and cranky at those liturgies, and only left my work toward the end of the service; I was better able to manage hunger if I was working than praying. When I arrived, the chapel narthex would be packed with other stragglers. We would be down on our knees, and then up again, then down. All the students seemed to smell of garlic. I dreaded the awkwardness of kneeling down on the ground with so many cassocked men, pressed together, someone always getting a shoe in the face. My mind, as usual, unable to shut off its constant thinking. But then it was time to take presanctified communion, and those of us packed together in the back would slowly move into the heat and light of the sanctuary, and to the commotion of the children. And the choir would be singing "O taste and see, O taste and see that the Lord is good!"

But I no longer work next to a chapel with daily services. I may not make it to Presanctified at all this Lent, as the service lasts past Isaiah's bedtime. But I savor the thought of it, and the memory of those mostly unappreciated liturgies at the seminary: that small, sincere world, surrounded by friends. Crossing the street, plum, quince / living in the orchard and being / hungry, and plucking / the fruit.

enter the blog

2010-01-26T09:37:00.001-05:00

It's 9:00 AM and I'm already stuck. My brain a hamster on a wheel, trying to solve a problem that is--at least for the moment--unsolvable. And God knows it's not going to be solved by running through the facts again and coming up with endless variations on the same speech. For the last five days my brain was unusually free of the hamster wheel, and those were some lovely productive days. So when the train of my thought got snagged on the treadmill this morning, I balked.

Enter the blog: the blog as therapy, the blog as confessional, the blog as a path (may I even suggest?) to redemption.

When I push that "publish post" button, a wave of relief and resolve sends me gliding along into my day: lose ends neatly tied, or at least explicitly untied, placing my minute struggles on a larger narrative trajectory. How satisfying. And I've said nothing here but to blog about blogging, which is probably the same as communicating about communication--something my husband refuses to do. I feel better, but my reader is likely irritated.

It's 9:30 and my son has found a tube of diaper rash cream and is carefully smearing it on his bedsheets. A half an hour and I've found my way out, at least for the next few minutes.

nighttime + separation anxiety + tantrums = the vaporization of motherly love

2010-01-21T21:55:00.001-05:00

As I write this Ike is screaming god-awful bloody-murder. His wail is relentless and unnerving, like a wild animal in heat. It doesn't help much that he is in his own room: in our Manhattan-sized apartment his crib is less than 12 feet from where I sit. Last night he did this for four hours, despite all our attempts to comfort him. When Charles and I went to bed at 11:30, I wheeled his crib into our room next to our bed. I dozed off at midnight, with Ike still standing upright, holding the rail of his crib, gazing intently at my face. As long as I lay facing him he remained mostly quiet.

It has been a few weeks of this behavior. I know I'm not the first mother who has faced a wailing child who will not sleep. But this is the first challenge I've faced as a parent--Ike was always a good night sleeper, even as an infant. I'm rather unnerved by how viscerally I hate him after he's screamed a mere hour. One hour and I'm ready to donate him to the Goodwill. A few mornings ago I could not even look at him. I was pissed that he'd screeched like a barbarian for more than three hours that night; lacking sleep, and any warm motherly feeling, I drank my coffee and looked out the window, ignoring him.

Today I bought a CD player & night-light that attaches to the crib. I burned him a CD of the choir of the Convent of St John of Kronstadt in St Petersberg. They have a very calming sound, almost like the pouring of water. I found a small icon of St Herman of Alaska which I placed in his crib. And now, after putting him to bed at 7:30, I have my prayer book ready and plan to read through it until (God willing) he falls asleep. As I write this, I go back into his room every five minutes or so and read a little more to him. He calms down while I pray, watching me. I'm nearly finished with Vespers at this point.

I have done a lot of web research. I don't think we're dealing with night terrors, he isn't necessarily asleep when the howling begins. I think it's some combination of separation anxiety, fear of the dark, lingering sickness, and a stubborn tantrum-prone nature. And the fact that, while he was sick, I let him sleep in our bed in order to better monitor him.

But the news for this evening is good. By the end of Compline he'd succumbed to sleep. I had to hold him down a bit to get him on his back, then violently rocked the crib so that he couldn't get back up on his feet, all the while reading Compline over the soft singing of St Petersburg nuns.

Ah. How wonderful he is when he's asleep. I might even love him again.

my do-nothing birthday

2010-01-20T18:01:00.002-05:00

I loathe rushing. I begin to doubt the whole point of going, and often the whole point of life, when rushing about trying to get somewhere. My philosophy is if I get anywhere at all it should just be a lovely surprise. This is really not the most functional attitude, and has made me late to every doctor appointment I've made for my son in his 16-month existence. And late for everything else too.

For my birthday C and I went down to the Lower East Side (sans Ike). I haven't been there since I was pregnant and Rachel was in town. And we did nothing. It was so nice. We sort of had a destination--the tea house near the tenement museum, but walking in that direction from the subway we came across a charming bookstore. We stopped in. After 15 minutes C was ready to plunge on, but it was my do-nothing birthday. So instead we took five glossy photography journals over to the bookstore coffee shop and sat for an hour or so and carefully looked them over. When we finished glossy photo journal number 4, I felt it was time to move on. Now that's my speed.

C and I recently wrote out personal mission statements. Here is how I sum up this slowness of mine in my mission statement: "to let go of the outcome, recognizing that a preoccupation with results often involves failing to notice the beauty of the process."

2009-12-03T18:49:00.000-05:00

drawing souls or just discrepancies

2009-02-07T20:30:00.009-05:00

On my first date with Charles we argued so vehemently that we ended up sitting on opposite ends of a public bench in Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, seething. Pink cherry blossoms fluttered past as I vowed to never date this man again, ruing the fact that we attended the same parish. Looking back now it is clear that the same dynamic that fueled our anger was also the impetus which brought us together.

Nowadays it goes something like this:

Me: I don't think Isaiah should go out like this, he needs his ears covered.
Charles: It's not that cold, he'll be fine.
Me: Yes, it is cold. And babies get earaches easily.
Charles: You are such a worrier.
Me: Well, the books say that their ears... er, well, I'm just trying to be a good mom.
Charles: Every mother has some thing she obsesses about.
Me: I'm not obsessing! Why do you always disagree with me?

It seems like every conversation is a more or less dramatic version of this, ending in me yelling, "Why don't you just agree with me?" Which is where it gets confusing, because then Charles says he does agree with me. And has all along.

If he did agree with me, though, I imagine a scenario more like this:

Me: I don't think Isaiah should go out like this, he needs his ears covered.
Charles: Oh, of course, it's cold. Where is his hat?

I was thinking about this yesterday in the shower (being the only place where I can think anymore), and when I got out I sat down next to Charles with a pad and colored pens. I said I had a few questions to ask him, and he looked at my pad and markers and said, "oh, no, is this one of those things where we have to draw our souls?"

I rolled my eyes and drew a circle. I said, "How often do you agree or disagree, in general, with what people have to say?" He said it was fifty-fifty. I cut the circle in two and colored the section for agree green and the section for disagree pink (see figure 1 above). Then, "Well, how do you think people perceive your response to what they are saying? What percentage of the time do they think you agree or disagree with what they are saying? Like here, on a pie-chart." Charles figured that only 25% of the time they thought he agreed with them and 75% of the time they thought he disagreed with them (figure 2). Then I asked, "How often do you agree with what I have to say?" "Ninety percent of the time" he said comfortably. I raised my eyebrows, and drew another pink and green pie chart (see figure 1a). Then, drawing the fourth circle, I said, "Well, here is how often I think you agree with me." I drew a small sliver for "agree," indicating that I assume he is agreeing with me only, say, 15% of the time (see figure 2a).

I don't know what conclusion you would draw from this exercise, but I'd say that this neat little discrepancy is why we argue so much.

get my hooky fix

2009-02-01T16:50:00.010-05:00

My freshman year in high school two of my friends suggested we skip school to go see Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I had no interest in the movie, but for some reason I agreed, and discovered that--besides the unpleasantness of sneaking on and off campus--skipping school was entirely my cup of tea. Having gotten away with it once, I began to skip school often, justified in my own mind by my good grades. Being a rather risk-adverse teenager, my outings were fairly tame: I rode the light rail to the large downtown library to browse, walked quietly by the homeless punks hanging out in Pioneer Square, sat in on my friends' classes at MLC (Portland's alternative public school where the teachers apparently welcome stray children into their classes). I wasn't a good liar, so I made it a habit to tell my mom when I cut class--setting a stellar example for my younger siblings whose subsequent school skipping activities were more likely to include shop lifting, pot smoking, and train hopping.

Playing hooky has become a life-long vice, or love, depending on how you look at it. I delight in stealing time for myself when I'm supposed to be elsewhere, doing something serious and official and un-fun. Time becomes more precious and satisfying, it's like getting the extra daylight savings hours year round. Of course, skipping as an adult lacks the glamour it had in my young adulthood. It's not really fun to stretch an office lunch hour when going back late just means I'll have to stay even later. And now, as a mostly stay-at-home-mom, I can barely find activities from which to play hooky. But I do manage: for example, there is church.

This past Sunday, as Charles was getting ready for liturgy, I lingered in bed. Charles doesn't like arriving late, and so he had dressed Isaiah and headed out the door with time to spare. I heard him loudly bless our apartment and his journey (a five-minute walk) to church as he left, and I wondered if this was in the hope that his wife would soon follow him. For awhile I entertained thoughts of arriving before communion, but even that was making me feel confined, so I gave up pretensions of going altogether. Instead, I did nothing, mostly. I took a long shower. I sat wrapped in my towel in the streaming sunlight and slowly applied lotion. I thought. I thought a lot. I made coffee. I read a little. I did the dishes and slowly tidied up the apartment. I even made the bed. I felt absolutely wonderful.

When Charles returned with Ike, he suggested that instead of missing church I take Saturday mornings for myself. This seemed to be a good idea, and I agreed. But later I thought it's skipping church that makes the time so delicious. And it's not that I don't like church--I do! I love our little parish, my friends there, not to mention our world-class coffee hour. The draw of missing church is that I'm playing hookey. I remember sitting in the sun outside the chapel at St Vlad's, late for liturgy as usual, talking to Jenny. Jenny, of course, had come out of church because of baby Anna--a completely legitimate excuse. I, on the other hand, just liked missing church. Our conversations were all the sweeter because the church, a few feet from us, was packed with praying people.

But maybe I can find other ways to get my hooky fix. Yesterday I hired a sitter to continue some urgent freelance work. As I was trudging through the snow to my little office, I passed a coffee shop. I felt annoyed that whenever I have a sitter all I do is rush rush rush to work, to the store, and rush rush rush home to feed Ike. I swung around and headed back to the coffee shop. I sat in a window seat for an hour, sipping chai, reading The New Yorker, and leisurely watching the snow fall on my neighborhood. Ah, it's so delicious.

the tale of the (un)hidden housekeeper

2009-01-22T19:40:00.012-05:00

Yesterday was one of those unproductive days where I have aspirations to get something done, if only Ike would stop fussing long enough so I could think of what it was that I needed to do. On days like this I've learned to put Ike in the stroller and go for a walk, because while I push I can sometimes remember what I wanted to be doing all along. But more than likely, by the time I've remembered, I've walked myself 15 blocks in the wrong direction.

Yesterday I was out pushing, considering what was to be done about babysitting on Thursday, (which was tomorrow then, and today today). Because today was the day the housekeeper was coming.

The housekeeper. I love her, I adore her, I live for the days she arrives and brings tidiness to my life. Nevertheless, I am deeply embarrassed to have a housekeeper. My dilemma on this particular occasion was this: I needed babysitting as much as I needed housekeeping, as I had freelance work that must be completed. And while my housekeeper is housekeeping she cannot also be babykeeping, so I must find someone else to tend to Ike. The catch is: I'd be dreadfully embarrassed if my babysitter knew I had a housekeeper. The babysitter must never know that I, in fact, do not scrub my bathroom floor myself. Shouldn't I be able to keep my tiny 600 square foot apartment clean all by myself?

My babysitter is a spunky Dominican woman from my parish who is liberal with mothering advice and political prattle. If she met my kindly Dominican housekeeper, think of all the things they could they say to each other in Spanish! Oh me oh my. So yesterday, after pushing Ike for at least 10 blocks, I called the babysitter and arranged for her to come from 9:00 to 11:00, as the housekeeper wasn't to arrive until 11:30--I would just have to get all my work done in those two hours.

This morning I was out the door and working at the office by 9:00, tapping through my emails productively. At 10:30 the babysitter called, and in her strong Dominican accent said, "Amber, there is someone here to clean your house." (Of course, because I get very little cell phone reception in the basement, it took three phone calls to get this information across.) Flummoxed and foiled I stammered, "Well, of course, let her in." Sheesh! Now they're sitting on my couch, parenting Ike together without me, I thought.

Walking home I called Charles, "Can I still be a nice person and have a housekeeper?" I asked. "Yes, and you'll get over your shame. Because you shouldn't have any," he said. And maybe I will, as long as my other babysitter doesn't find out.

ah, to be single again...

2009-01-20T21:24:00.005-05:00

I'm not cut out to be a wife or mother. I lose my touch with projects more demanding than watching snow fall or drinking coffee, although I think I could manage drinking coffee while watching snow fall.

This afternoon I fell asleep after buckling Ike into his bouncy chair in front of a Baby Einstein DVD. I had originally thought he might fall asleep on the bed with me, but he seemed more interested in whimpering while attempting to eat my hair. So I decided, despite the dire predictions of Neil Postman, to raise my child in front of the television. At least in front of Baby Einstein, C-SPAN, and the sleazy 1970s crime movies that Charles keeps bringing home.

Ike cooed while purple zebra puppets painted Monet scenes, and I fell asleep thinking worried thoughts about the laundry I'd left in the laundry room. When Ike started crying, I was behind the glass wall of sleep. My limbs were too heavy to move, and besides, I was involved in a dream where my neighbors were rummaging through the sheets in my laundry basket. A xylophone version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons was playing over and over. I don't know how long Ike cried, but I must have finally got up and brought him back to bed with me, because when I woke up an hour later he was there, still crying and tugging on my hair.

The sun had set, my laundry was hogging all the dryers in the laundry room, xylophone Vivaldi trilled from the menu page of the Baby Einstein DVD, and Charles has sent a text message saying he was staying late at the office. Something had to be made for dinner.

I think I was a lot better at being single.

9 hours 12 minutes: begrudgingly receiving

2009-01-17T18:34:00.019-05:00

Almost a year ago I wrote a post entitled "you make me feel like an incompetent woman" about the guilt I felt when Charles does things for me. Nearly a year later, navigating NYC with an infant in tow, I find that I must ask help from people all the time.

Recently, on the trip back from Honolulu to New York, I needed help, and knowing that made me all shades of irritated and resentful. When the crew called for those with children to board first, I guiltily passed the waiting crowds, worried they'd all be thinking "oh no, a baby!" I'd been assigned a seat at the bulk head, which I'd read was good for mothers with babies, but why was beyond me as there was no place to store my diaper bag at arms length. A middle-aged Asian lady sitting across the aisle from me offered to stow it in the overhead compartment, and I thanked her, feeling guilty for being a burden and annoyed that the diapers, wet-wipes, and my reading material was now out of reach. The seat next to me was empty and the man on the other side of it looked over at Ike and said, "well, you've got your hands full! I'll get the bag down for you later if you need it." I nodded nervously, smiling, assuming he was thinking "oh, crap, I wonder if I can get a different seat." I turned away and began to nurse Ike, hoping no one else would take notice of me and that oh God, pretty please the seat next to me would stay empty.

Much of the time I prefer that people take no notice of me. And asking for help is bringing attention directly to myself, like saying, "hey, come here and chat!" to perfect strangers. I worry: How can I repay them? Will they think I'm rude because I won't want to talk? What's the point of talking to someone I'll never see again? Or more poignantly, the self-criticism: Why don't I just relax and enjoy talking to strangers? I dread being drawn into conversation with some horribly well-meaning person who'll yap my ear off. I suspect I'll be sitting there and thinking all sorts of snippy retorts in my head while saying with contrived politeness, "hmm, yes, I see." Although, for the record, this rarely happens. My fears are generally unfounded, and are based on an unbecoming social squeamishness.

I felt God must have heard my plea when the plane filled up with passengers while the seat next to me remained empty. I had just begun to gloat when the stewardess announced they were selling the remaining seats to stand-by fliers. Within minutes a tall, thin, and well-tanned woman in her mid-30s sat down next to me. She smiled vacantly when she saw Ike and crooned, "ooooh, is that your baby?" I paused and tentatively said "yes..." thinking, but not saying, "no, I stole him from a couple in the airport." What the hell? Just the kind of communication I hate. This 9 hour 12 minute flight was going to be awful. She was probably returning from vacationing on Maui with her college sorority sisters. Ugh. Serves her right to sit next to a baby.

Me and my evil thoughts. I don't feel nice thinking them, which adds to my general bad mood. When the stewardess came by to offer drinks, I was slinking lower into my seat, Ike asleep on my lap, my eyes glued to the monitor announcing 8 hours 24 minutes left on the flight. But maybe God heard my prayer after all. "Do you want a bassinet?" she asked. "Sure," I said, "if it's no problem." When she returned, my well-tanned neighbor helped attach it to the wall directly in front of her seat and offered to switch seats with me if I liked.

I didn't get but a few hours sleep on the plane, but the baby slept well in his little carriage. When I drifted off to sleep the man two seats over watched Ike, even putting his pacifier back in when he became fussy. He commended me for breast-feeding, and told me about his own children. The Asian woman offered to hold Ike so I could go to the bathroom, and helped me change Ike's diaper as well. Ike was as good as could be expected, and no one seemed terribly put-out by his presence. Ms Well-Tanned slept most of the trip, and my heart softened toward her when I noticed how unhappy she looked asleep. The same friendly man who watched over Ike struck up a conversation with her, and I overheard her say she had gone to Maui to get some space after a painful breakup with her boyfriend. Sigh. I'm so quick to judge the well-tanned, successful-looking people of the world.

All said, it was a fairly good 9 hour flight, primarily because of the help of strangers and Ike's good temperament. What kind of example do I set for my son if I slink down to determinedly do everything myself instead of accepting what God so freely gives me through those around me? I know this is one of the challenges of my personality: to learn how to graciously respond to strangers without allowing my suspicious nature and fragile ego to get in the way. I can ask for help when I need it, and enjoy receiving it, and not to take myself and everyone else so seriously. The words of St Philaret ring true, "in unforeseen events let me not forget that all are sent by you."

the blog resumes: with or without a working vocabulary

2009-01-13T22:14:00.006-05:00

Well. Maybe I will do this again. In stops and starts. 5 minutes here. For the last year my journal entries, months apart, usually consist of two and a half sentences virtually identical to each other in exhausted pathos. It takes more than three sentences to write yourself into hope.

As I sit at my computer, my 4-month old son Ike, sleeps. Because he doesn't nap for long I won't be able to finish this post. Not now. While he sleeps I may have time to tidy our small apartment, take a short shower, or chop carrots for beef stew. Or, less usefully, play Word Twist and update my facebook status. Blogging requires a working vocabulary, linear thought, and a sense of humor. Which is a little much to ask of me lately.

I dread putting words to this transition: the new wife and mother roles haven't congealed and much of the time I feel like I'm play-acting at being myself. I imagined I'd step into a new life like putting on a velvety bathrobe, but so far it's been more like getting dressed in junior high. In the last year I've gotten pregnant, gotten married four times over, moved twice, bought my first condo, gave birth, and left the publishing job where I've been employed for the last nine years. As if transitioning to caring for an infant, with all the sleep depravation entailed, wasn't work enough. I just don't have time to think, which sort of rules out processing all these changes.

I've spent the last two weeks in Holualoa, Hawaii with Fr John and Jenny Schroedel. And although I can't honestly say that I had much time to think while here (the Schroedel's youngest daughter Natalie is a little two-year-old tornado), I've at least had time to think about not thinking. Which led to this blog post on my last night in Hawaii.

Their cavernous house is quiet now, the kids are all asleep, and the sound of crickets fills the cool night air. Ike and I fly back to New York tomorrow, to Charles and our tiny green-walled apartment in wintry South Harlem. Maybe I can begin processing this mother-wife thing online, in stops and starts, with or without glamorous graphics and linear thought. As Amber Schley Iragui. No more Lucy.

you make me feel like an incompetent woman

2008-02-19T14:21:00.010-05:00

Last week when I came home Charles was sitting at his computer. This is usually what Charles is doing when I come home, and his screen is usually covered with inscrutable columns of numbers or puzzling line graphs. He never seems to brood over these pages, but flips through them as if they were Italian shoes he was considering purchasing on zappos. He greeted me and cheerfully asked me if I had my 2006 tax forms. I think I just looked at him blankly for awhile--no one I know asks after tax forms cheerfully. But when I unearthed the fat 2006 envelope from H&R Block, Charles immediately set to work on our joint 2007 taxes, occasionally asking me to clarify this or that.

Watching him, I felt guilty in that neurotic married way I've suddenly rediscovered. Guilty because someone is doing something for me that I imagine is burdening them. Guilty because I am not doing it myself and thus must be incompetent and in need of a great deal of help. I finally said, "you don't have to do that, you know." Charles stopped and looked at me with puzzled expression, "I'm confused," he said, "do you not want me to do our taxes?" I paused and considered. "Well," I said, "If you want to do them, if you don't mind doing them, it's great, really great." Charles turned back to the computer and continued to plug away at our taxes without the slightest trace of resentment.

I'm just not used to this. Not used to being married to such an amazingly capable and cheerful man who actually seems to enjoy doing things for me. It's not that I mind exactly, it's that I feel awkward about it. I'm used to being the one who does things for other people. I'm used to feeling, well, very competent. It's sick, I know: because my "competence" calculated against another person's "incompetence" isn't the most healthy self-esteem measurement system. It isn't very nice--or fair--for either party. But I felt it worked for me in the past.

It worked for me with my ex-husband, for example. Now, for the record, I have a great deal of respect and affection for my ex-husband, but it isn't stretching things to say that he wasn't exactly a pillar of practicality. The everyday workings of life often seemed to elude him, and I was more than happy to sort it all out on his behalf. I considered his absentmindedness mostly endearing. Looking back, though, I must admit that he bolstered my fragile self-image--I was necessary for his survival, a superwoman with forms and paperwork. It all seems rather pathetic now: without him as a foil I'm just mediocre with paperwork, and with practicality in general.

Charles and I went to work-out that evening, and when we returned he sat down at his computer and resumed work on our taxes, sweaty gym clothes notwithstanding. This baffled me just as much as his wanting to do the taxes in the first place. I can't imagine prolonging financial paperwork late into the evening donned in damp exercise gear. I added this to the top of my list of odd behavior proving Charles is nuts, or a robot, or an alien. In a short while he announced he'd finished and that we'd receive a nice tax return from the IRS. I probably just grunted; it all seemed like science-fiction.

The next day at work I gratefully pondered my enormously efficient husband, how incredibly fortunate I am to have his help and love. When I went to get my mail, I found a letter from the Department of Revenue addressed to my ex-husband, stating that he owed money and that his license could be revoked as a consequence.

I think I'm coming out on the side of feeling incompetent, if only temporarily. It's healthy to work toward a more reasonable measurement of self-worth, just as it's healthy to let others help and support me without feeling guilty. And, really, I don't want to do the taxes ever again.

a pinch of moana

2008-01-22T11:33:00.000-05:00

I've been pinching myself often lately. I expect any moment to wake up in my apartment in Crestwood and feel my familiar old bed rattling as the Metro North express train passes on its way to White Plains. Instead, it's 6:30 am and I've been wide awake for two hours, listening to waves beating on the Waikiki beach just below our balcony. I also awake of late to the sound of sirens wailing 34 floors down, and I lie and watch the sky lighten over Central Park, turning the midtown high rises outside the window from gray to green to gold. Sometimes pigeons circle, flapping down to roost on this or that cluttered rooftop.

My life has changed at speeds of which I didn't think myself capable. I still don't, which is why I pinch myself, or alternately lie down under my desk after work (the one place in my daily life which has remained the same) and close my eyes and pray.

I'm in Hawaii to get married for the second time to the same person (Charles and I got married at NY City Hall on December 31st, 2007). Fr John Schroedel will be marrying us in a few days in Kona, Hawaii, and then we plan on getting married to each other at least two more times in the next few months. It's occurred to me that these spaced-out weddings actually serve to soften the intensity of the change, not to mention that small events are easier to plan and offer a charming spontaneity.

There are so many things to write about--the beauty of finding the "next right thing" to which to address oneself, the difficulty of having to make decisions with another person who doesn't always naturally agree with me, the surprising ease of being married to a man who regularly makes wise decisions without worry, my unease about having a doorman or a cleaning lady. It all, quite honestly, seems unreal.

I was pinching myself again last night when we arrived at our hotel. We drove into Waikiki at sunset after having spent the day touring the parts of the island where Charles' grew up, went to school, body surfed. Waikiki is different from the rest of the island and I was lamenting having to stay at a hotel here. "It's so touristy. Like a big mall, " I complained. Charles said nothing. We passed yet another Louis Vuitton, another glittery hotel. Sigh. And then we pulled into the most magnificent building I've seen since arriving in Hawaii. A historic landmark, the beautifully restored Moana is the oldest hotel in Hawaii. Built in 1901, it holds a grace and elegance that instantly shut down my whining. Our room has a balcony overlooking the ocean, and from where I sit at my computer all I see is blue waves, the tops of two palm trees and a handful of morning surfers bathed in early sunlight.

I'm adjusting.

so don't be mean to me

2007-12-04T13:07:00.000-05:00

It's cheap to upload somebody else's story, especially as I haven't posted in so long, but I wanted to share a few "finds of the day" that I particularly liked.

sublime subway brass

2007-10-27T23:32:00.001-04:00

A few months ago, as I was running to catch the 6 train at GCS, I heard the wail of horns. Not the angry sound of taxi horns filtering down from the street, but brass horns: trumpets and trombones or the like. The horns were joyously howling over a deep rhythmic percussion, reminding me of Balkan gypsy music, rock, and jazz at once. I stopped running to the 6 train, and as if hypnotized, walked in the direction of the horns. A substantial subway audience crowded around a group of seven or eight young African-American men trumpeting a swelling wail into the busy subway corridor.

I stood transfixed, hair standing up on my bare arms. I don’t remember but that I didn’t move for at least ten minutes. My appointment seemed unimportant. The swaying musicians were unbearably beautiful; they transformed the grimy passageway into something akin to sacred. Between songs I finally broke away, putting money in the bin at their feet. I purposely did not look at the stack of CDs next to the bin, nor at the name of the band. I wanted to remember them this way, sweating in the subway to the howling passion of their music.

I have heard them playing in the subway since that evening. Each time I stop and listen, each time eyeing the CDs suspiciously. Last night on the way to my AT lesson they were playing in Union Square subway. I didn’t have any cash on me, but I did get the name of the band: The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. I did a google search on them and found a few interesting links, including a New York Times video (click here) and their own blogspot site (click here).

I think next time I pass them I'll buy a CD.

she's clearly turning right, right?

2007-10-23T13:39:00.000-04:00

I was forwarded a link to a test to determine whether one is left or right brained (click here). I was expecting a bunch of questions followed by a score, but no: the test is merely an animated image of a woman spinning around. And she was spinning to the right. The accompanying information says if you see her spinning clockwise, you're right brained. If she's spinning counter-clockwise, you're left brained.

Wait a minute. This must be a joke. She is clearly turning clockwise, how could anyone see her turning counter-clockwise? It's impossible. And besides, we may interpret things in two ways, but the data is the data: one cannot turn both clockwise and counter-clockwise at the same time.

I forwarded the link to my co-worker, who also saw the dancer turning clockwise. Of course. But then she said, "Oh wait! No, she's turning the other way!" Suddenly the dancer started spinning counter-clockwise for my co-worker. I looked again, for a long time, but she kept turning right. Then, for a strange blip of about 30 seconds, I also saw the woman spinning counter-clockwise. Aughhhhhhhhhh!

Well, I'm a little bewildered. I don't know if this optical illusion can determine right- or left-brain propensity, but it certainly shows that things which seem utterly obvious to us can be seen a different way by other people. It's not a surprise to me that I'd be right-brained, nor is it a surprise that my co-worker would be more balanced between the two. I do wonder, however, how many people see this dancer turning counter-clockwise at first glance?

birthright reclaimed by rocks and roots

2007-10-13T23:13:00.000-04:00

photo by Veronika

I have a college memory of myself on a bright Spring day, unusually warm for the Pacific Northwest, walking through downtown Portland's leafy park blocks toward the Portland State University library. Although I was a student at a university on the other side of the city, I used Portland State's library from time to time and was now returning a number of well-overdue books. The semester was nearing its end, the leaves were emerging on the trees, and the sun was miraculously shining.

As I ambled through the park blocks, I commended myself: "I am one of those people who returns her library books." I recall feeling unusually pleased, joyful even, as I contemplated my efficiency. Never mind that most people return their library books, and many probably do so before they become overdue. But what was important to me then was that I was returning my books. That I'd driven downtown to do so, had found a parking spot near the busy campus, and was now walking under budding trees to drop them into the metal slot at the front of the library--this was the crux of the matter. The fines I may have accrued did not diminish my self-satisfaction.

This memory stands out for me because the sort of self-confidence that proclaims, "This is exactly what I should be doing, and I'm doing it so well!" isn't exactly a birthright of mine. I am prone more often to doubt myself, to overreact to "oughts" and "shoulds", and generally to be running behind while castigating myself for my incessant tardiness.

This memory gave rise to yet another college memory, this time from the slave narrative of Frederick Douglass read in my African-American Literature class. The enslaved Douglass had been hired out by his owner as a farm hand, where he was regularly beaten. One day, after a particularly bad beating, a fellow slave gave him a root and told him always to carry it in his right pocket to ward off beatings by white men. Douglass put the root in his pocket and went back to work, suspecting the root business was nonsense. However, the next day when the slave owner came out to beat him, Douglass fought back. From that moment on, Douglass' courage and faith in himself increased; he was not beaten again. My professor contended that the root was a symbol of Douglass' empowerment, specifically a phallic symbol of his reclaimed manhood. I was a little embarrassed by the phallic reference, but the meaning of the root was not lost on me. In fact, it has remained with me through the years--perhaps because I like natural objects, symbolism, and empowerment.

I carry rocks in my pockets, my purse, my car, my messenger bag. Lately I've been carrying a small white agate, roundish, from the Oregon coast. It is the size of a large pea, and an intricate pattern of opaque white mottles its translucent surface. Sometimes I think of the root in Douglass' pocket when I feel the little rock in mine. My particular agate is a reminder to me of who I am, that the joy of life doesn't reside outside myself but in me: I am the glowing self I carry, I protect, I affirm.

And I do not mean to imply by this that God is in anyway tangential, or to propose carrying roots and rocks as talismans of empowerment. I think you should carry whatever you want in your pocket: because God is in the rock, the root, and in the world all around.

I am the lens through which I experience God, and my rock is a reminder to honor myself, my lens. Self-confidence and joy are not something I will get someday, perhaps, when I become someone impressive who isn’t always late, but is already mine. One could say, in fact, that self-confidence and joy are my birthright. I can be late for things and be happy. And I can be on time too. I can make bad decisions, or good ones, and be happy, confident, walking across the park blocks in the sunlight returning overdue books.

guess where

2007-10-12T18:23:00.001-04:00

The painting on the wall is a clue.

with book

2007-10-10T15:10:00.001-04:00

in support of feelings, slow or otherwise

2007-10-07T01:01:00.000-04:00

My windows are all open and a heavy autumn rain runs loudly off the eaves. The sky turns blue from time to time with distant lightning.

I'm sitting on my futon thinking, where I do most my sitting and thinking. Actually, I am worrying. I'm worrying about my propensity to decide what I think I should feel and then try to feel that way without waiting for my feelings to catch up. My feelings are poky. My feelings, basically, are tired of my mind telling them how to do their job. Whenever my mind gets all high and mighty about things, my feelings slow down. Clogged, as it were, in protest.

To cite a small example, my mind has composed three new posts for my blog over the last ten days or so. But the posts did not fully address the situation to the satisfaction of my feelings. So I didn't post them. I should post them, I thought. No, I felt.

My feelings are doing better now that I've written a post lobbying for their interests. My mind is embarrassed that this post uses the word "feelings" so often. My mind needs to mind its own business.

Meanwhile, I make do with colors and sounds. Thank God, my mind and feelings are united on all things aesthetic.

she asks "why not?" of more than a coulibiac

2007-09-21T13:53:00.000-04:00

Since TimesSelect articles are now free, we can get all the goodies they've been holding out on us. For example, Fr John sent me a link to Maira Kalman's illustrated column The Principals of Uncertainty today. It's aching, tender, dreamy. It inspires me to want to blog in the style of her column. I'm particularly fond of Part 5: the beautiful children and other things. I do hope I won't be sued if I put one of the images from the column up here--I love the line next to the coulibiac: "why not?" Indeed.

P.S. if the link above doesn't work, paste this in your browser: http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/

and then there's that

2007-09-20T17:03:00.000-04:00

When I get old and loony I plan on wearing stuffed birds in my hair. At first I'll just add a fake bird on my green Sunday hat and pretend I didn't know it was there. A year or two later I'll start affixing a fake bird to the top of a complicated up-do; my hair can get so unruly people might think I didn't notice. Matters will move from bad to worse when I start picking up dead birds and having them stuffed and then wearing those.

Meantime, I'll just stick garnish in my mouth. My mom sent me this photo from the evening before her wedding. It's clear I'm headed in the right direction.

diptychs

2007-09-12T11:02:00.000-04:00

I know y'all don't obsessively check my flickr site, so I'm posting a few of my more recent diptychs here. There is something about making diptychs which reminds me of high school, of scissors and magazines and glue.

I like feedback.

like orthodox jewish women?

2007-09-05T16:15:00.000-04:00

A month or two ago a box addressed to Veronika arrived at my office. It was full of clothes that our friend Julia had deemed unsuitable to her new life as mother and Midwesterner. I persuaded Veronika to give me two of the blouses, one a black v-neck with lace trim and the other a denim-colored cotton button-down. All the clothes in the box were simple, stylish, significantly more modest than racy, and reminded me fondly of Julia. I remember the blouses as part of Julia's wardrobe here in New York; now they are refugees from a life she no longer wears. Our fashion sense changes as our lifestyles change, as our bodies age, as we take on or discard roles, or--in the case of Julia--move to small town Midwestern America.

One nice thing about dressing in my thirties is that I have grown more or less comfortable with my body and have worked out a way to dress that both pleases me and flatters my figure. Which means lots of whimsical skirts, simple low-cut blouses, tight-fitting cardigans or jackets, shoes that unite comfort with girliness, and boots as often as weather allows. I also try to incorporate one incongruent item--Adriel's invaluable fashion advice--a pair of green shoes, pale pink fishnet tights, or an orange lucite rose ring. I dress colorfully, artistically, and I like to think attractively. Maybe even sexy. Right?

Well.

Clearly "sexy" means something different to men than it does to women, and doesn't include my beloved moss-green tulle-over-satin Cyndi-Lauper-meets-the-Little-Mermaid skirt. My boyfriend hates it. He also thinks I wear mostly dark colors (read "earth tones") and he mentioned the other day, off-hand, that I dress like an Orthodox Jewish woman. What the heck? My style is being likened to that of a wig-wearing, buttoned-up-blouse, long-skirted Orthodox Jewish woman?? Oi Vey!

I mentioned this outrageous critique of my fashion sense to Veronika, who in turn asked her boyfriend what he thought of her style. "Well, sweetie," he said, "a little like an Orthodox Jewish lady."

So, there it is. Men think we dress like Orthodox Jewish women. Veronika and I wandered around New Haven on Labor Day, looking in askance at the returning undergrad Yale girls prancing around in short shorts, satiny strapless blouses, and showy sheath dresses. Most the girls we saw were more than ten years younger than us, and--although they weren't wearing much--what they were wearing wasn't all that interesting or particularly attractive. But they themselves were beautiful, glowing, their faces hopeful and energetic. Whether or not their clothing looked good on them, they looked good. When I was their age I had no idea how beautiful I was; I was concerned instead with being an adult, with knowing the right things, with pleasing my professors which, in turn, meant displeasing my father.

But I'm a woman in her early thirties who knows she's beautiful. I respond quite warmly to the youthful beauty of these enthusiastic co-eds, albeit not as warmly to the power their attendant sexiness has over men. That is the rub, of course, the place where something sticks inside me. Yet doesn't my own thirty-something beauty come in recognizing that I have nothing to fear from youthful beauty? That dignity comes in dressing appropriate to my age, to my interests, and to my own inner sense of style?

And I don't think I dress like an Orthodox Jewish lady.

I asked my boyfriend what he meant by that comment last night. He considered for a moment, "Well, I didn't mean you dress dowdy. I guess I meant you dress a little retro, a little European." Well, that's better. I dress a little European. Fine.

By the way: this is what comes to mind when I think of Orthodox Jewish ladies--

girlfriends, boyfriends, onions

2007-08-27T17:32:00.000-04:00

I took a date to my Mom's wedding in July. That is, I brought Rachel with me--which seemed like a normal enough thing to do. She's my friend. We wanted to go on vacation. She's never been to Portland. And I didn't think I could survive my family by myself. All good. But when I brought her to the ceremony I could tell by the curious glances of my mother's friends--all of whom I've known since childhood--that they wanted to know who she was, exactly, to me. It didn't help, I suppose, that I was wearing a silver band that Veronika had brought back to me from Russia. My sister bluntly asked, "What's that ring about?" My mom's friends were more polite, but there was a subtext: Why in God's name are you still living in New York, do you have a boyfriend, and why do you bring beautiful redheads to your mom's wedding? The confusion made the whole ordeal more interesting. And no one ever asked why I'd brought Rachel, which was just as well. Keep them guessing.

Yesterday I decided I should tell my mom I have a boyfriend. It had become a task that needed to be faced sooner rather than later, since everyone else in my family already knew. I know my dating life seems mysterious to my family: I date non-American men whose names my Mom cannot pronounce, or non-Christian philosophers who cause my father heartache, or weirdos of whom my brother is generally skeptical. My sister, for her part, is merely convinced that everyone I date smells like onions.

So I decided to tell my newly-remarried Mom I had a boyfriend. I thought I should be ruthlessly honest about the situation, as it's foolish to gush too much about men you date to your Mom. "We're perfect for each other" or any such crap sounds silly when we break up four months later. And besides, my boyfriend isn't perfect and we argue a good deal. I believe I mentioned in a previous post that I went on a date with a man I wished the ground would open and swallow whole? Well, that's him. And I genuinely like him even if I sometimes wish he'd stop talking.

So, well, my Mom was suspicious, "But does he make you happy, dear?" she asked. I paused, "Well," I said, "it depends on what you mean by happy. I don't know if any one really makes me happy, I mean, besides my girlfriends. Jenny, Rachel, and Veronika make me happy. "Ohhh!" my mom replied in a worried screech, "You're a lesbian!"

Well she's got me there. I'm a lesbian because my girlfriends make me happy. "If only I was a lesbian," I said, "my life would be so much simpler." Clearly it was not only my Mom's friends who'd been worrying about me and Rachel at the wedding.

I repeated this story to Jenny this morning, during which she repeatedly put down the phone to complete various tasks--tasks of great importance like scratching her head. I lamented the fact that she wasn't listening, and she agreed, "Oh, it's true, I don't know how my friends put up with me!" "It's because I love you," I replied. And then I added, "After all, I'm a lesbian." And she said, "I appreciate that."

I could use a cute watch

2007-08-23T13:47:00.000-04:00

Lord knows timeliness is not my strength.

Time is a just a big blurry wash of moments that ideally should be spent drinking coffee, listening to music, practicing yoga, taking photographs, designing books, reading books, spending time with my friends, and kissing. Balancing my checkbook, writing business emails, sitting in dentists' waiting rooms, opening mail, getting the oil changed, and scheduling anything cramp my style. Not to mention soak up hours and hours of time I could spend fooling with images in Photoshop and reading my friends' blogs.

But my commitment to leisure has become problematic, as you can imagine. Partially because the it is difficult to relax during yoga if I'm wondering if I have enough money in my checking account to cover my most recent trip to Starbucks. It has occurred to me lately that I might enjoy yoga more, and enjoy my coffee more, if I wasn't avoiding my responsibilities to do so.

Yes, I know, roll your eyes. I am thirty-three and should have come to this conclusion long ago.

But although habits are hard to break, I'm trying. For one, I now open my mail immediately, instead of looking in askance at the thick white business envelopes and stashing them in an ever-growing pile of unopened fears. I am trying to get to work on time, regularly, and I email a friend each morning to tell her when I got in and when I leave. A friend lent me a DVD on time management, which I am actually looking forward to watching. And I'm thinking it's time I bought a watch. Or you could send me yours, if it's cute.

a promise to post

2007-08-16T16:49:00.000-04:00

I know, I know. I haven't posted. I keep starting posts I don't finish. It's been hectic lately--I haven't even read the last 100 pages of Potter (he's in the Room of Requirement with Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle and I read tense scenes without a long stretch of peace and quiet--maybe I'll take Potter with me to the nail salon tonight and get past the magical violence while my feet are being lotioned and massaged). But I did go on a photo shoot yesterday evening to Yonkers with Veronika and John Schroedel's grandfather Warren. I'm posting my favorite photo from that shoot here (more here), with a promise to post more soon!

a little potter with chocolate goes a long way

2007-07-27T18:54:00.000-04:00

It's hot in New York. I'm sitting on my futon with all four fans running, thinking. Thinking about what I could do tonight, since I'm not going up to New Haven to see Nostalgia. I could go to Trader Joes. I could do some of the freelance work I didn't do while on vacation last week. I could go jogging in Bronxville. I could unearth my suitcase from under the pile of clothes I pulled out of it and clean my room. Or I could finish off the chocolate bar I bought at the airport and then take a nap with my face buried in the next chapter of Harry Potter.

All options--besides unpacking and the freelance work--sound good to me, and seem equally likely ways to spend the evening.

It's been a bit of a rough ride of a week, and I've got a lot to think about. My Mum got remarried to a man I didn't meet until a day before the wedding. Two people I know died last week--one quite tragically. A close family member had emergency surgery for a critical condition. And I've had a few serious conversations with the man I seem more or less to be dating.

Mid-July I went to Portland for a week, ostensibly for the wedding. I hung out with my brother and sister, bantered around with my Dad, slept in my childhood bedroom, had dinner with my ex-husband's brother's ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, talked to people at the wedding I haven't seen since I was a little girl (they all seemed to think living in New York was paramount to living on the moon), fielded awkward questions from people at church, spent a few misty days at the Oregon coast, and hiked up by beloved Eagle Creek in the Columbia Gorge. Since I haven't been back to Portland in four years--for reasons too complicated to discuss here--the trip was both exhilarating and exhausting. In the short time I've been back in New York I haven't really managed to put myself back together again, much less readjust to Eastern time. My refrigerator is empty, my clothes need to be put away, and my mail needs to be opened. And Fr John, Jenny, Anna Pepper and Natalie are arriving this weekend for yet one more funeral.

No wonder a little Potter with chocolate, while laying on my bed, sounds enticing.

P.S. Photos from Oregon, and the wedding, can be found here: oregon, family, wedding set on flickr.

guest star gets angry

2007-07-03T14:12:00.000-04:00

Rachel drove off for the Midwest this past Saturday, leaving me sans a jogging partner and daily confidant, but with a rather large and ugly glass vase. I treasure this present. It rolls around on the back seat of my car, reminding me of where I'm going.

As I think I've mentioned before, I don't get mad very often.

On occasion I have felt an icy wall of anger come down inside me. The person against whom the icy wall descends is so painfully reprehensible to me that I literally pray that the ground opens up and swallows them whole--their cars, their bank accounts, their Bibles, their skateboards, the benches on which they happen to be sitting. Unfortunately Nostalgia has been on the other side of the wall more than once, as has my ex-husband, my father, my sister, and most recently a man I went on a date with. But the story of that "date" is not being told here, not today.

When I'm seized with this icy anger to merely gaze upon the object of my hatred is beyond my power. Details of their humanity are obliterated from my consciousness: they cease to exist as humans with whom I have any common ground. I don't wish to harm them myself, that would include acknowledging them. God, on the other hand, is allowed--no, encouraged--to let any sort of natural catastrophe or disaster overtake them. Something along the lines of Numbers 16 where "the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the whole clan of Korah and their families and all their possessions." Ananias and Saphira also come to mind.

No, I don't think I have a problem with anger.

Many of my dear friends get mad far more often than I do, and they throw things when they're mad. I recall sneaking out with a package of cherry tomatoes to the alley behind Jenny's house and watching with bewilderment as she hurled the tomatoes at the garage door. She wanted to throw eggs, but had none. Other friends have tossed whole sets of china down stairwells, heaved carefully stacked piles of research papers across the room, dropped full bags of groceries off the balcony. I admire their artfulness, the passion of their protests, but never felt anything akin to it myself.

Lately I've found myself angry more often. And not at anyone particular, not even at God (a usual target), but at at small bits of life gone awry, the insensitive remark of an acquaintance, dreams that seem still too far from coming true. I threw my hair clip (yes, I know this is lame) with all the strength I could muster across my living room last week. It cheerily bounced off the venetian blinds and onto the floor, sadly causing no damage. When I told Rachel about the hair clip incident and she offered me the vase--a present that she's not had the heart to dispose of.

Today at work I was filled with a surge of anger over a rather insignificant oversight of one of my friends. I added it up with a few other like incidents and reached for my mostly-empty water bottle and pitched it with all my strength across the room. My office is cavernously large, so by the time it hit the bookshelf it made a unsatisfactory little "plink" and fell to the carpeted floor. I picked it up and threw it at the door. It made a louder noise. I walked over to a pile of boxes and books and started throwing it at them with all my might. That dumb water bottle would not break.

But I have a vase that's waiting for a good throw.

guest starring me

2007-06-29T08:10:00.001-04:00

When I woke up this morning at quarter past six and staggered out into the living room, Rachel was already dressed and had folded her blankets and piled them neatly on the futon. I, on the other hand, couldn't yet see or speak clearly. I went to the kitchen for a drink, looking in askance at the folded bed linens.

"I guess that's what you do when you're a guest," I said in an attempt to comfort myself. Guests get up, get dressed, make their beds. They only have so many outfits from which to chose.

Walking back into the living room, I leaned on the door frame. "I should guest star in my own life," I said. Rachel laughed.

But no, I'm serious. Think of it, guest stars show up and behave themselves--they smile, make people laugh. After all, they were invited to the show just to glow and sparkle. They don't get all worked up about unimportant details, or about the overall direction of the show. They have a job to do and do it. It's the "one day at a time" rhetoric played out over and over. When I'm on vacation I get up and make my bed (well, sometimes), I go jogging, I read good books, I plan in long chats over coffee, I'm generally pleasant to be around. In other words, I guest star in my own life when I'm on vacation.

So I'm going to try it. Guest starring me: at the press, in my little Crestwood apartment, on the Bronxville track, in the Tuckahoe Starbucks, passing through Grand Central. I'll do my bills as guest star, clean the bathroom guest-star style, bestow guest star smiles, blink with guest star bewilderment when things go awry.

I'm still not sure that it will motivate me to make my bed. But, heck, some guest stars don't make their beds--I'll be that kind of guest star.

a looping spiral with photographic tangents

2007-06-26T22:39:00.001-04:00

This post is for Katya. Because I hung up on her. Well, I was on the phone with her when I got another call and I abruptly ended our conversation with the assurance I'd call back. Which I never did. And this just after she complimented my blog.

I dropped my conversation with Katya because my sister Heidi called, and Heidi never calls me. OK, not never--she probably called once or twice in the 1990s. And my sister called because my brother didn't answer his phone, which is something he's been into lately, i.e. not answering. (I'm trying to be supportive of this new rarely-answer policy, but I admit it's disconcerting.) Apparently it's disconcerting for my sister as well, leaving her no option but to call the last person on her list of immediate relatives: me. She needed to vent about Mum, who's getting married next month (need I say more...). So, now I'm sitting here enjoying this fact, not that my mother is getting married, but that my sister's annoyance about Mum getting married prompted her to call me. Oh me oh my oh, it made my day, my week, maybe my month.

I hung up on Katya to talk to Heidi, who called me because my brother is taken with not answering, and because my Mum is creating a ruckus. The last of all these being the only rather hum-drum, what-else-is-new affair. (This is my own little version of the I Know an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly song.)

But, as I said, this post is for Katya, because before I hung up on her she said that a new post on my blog is sometimes the most exciting thing to happen in her day. And Katya didn't say this because my blog is riveting, but because living on the high prairie--miles from anything but two empty, onion-domed orthodox churches and an accompanying cemetery--doesn't always make for loads of external excitement. (Dear Katya, forgive me for mentioning this comment here, it was such a nice thing of you to say.) Katya's husband is the priest at the church, she has two young sons and a large house with expansive views of sky and sloping cattle pasture. She is, as those of you who know her can testify, anything but uninteresting. A cultured city girl living bravely in the midst of bleak beauty, she wears elegant clothes, cooks Parisian meals, and writes novels, poetry and short stories that far outstrip the banal reflections of my blog.

And now this unriveting blog post will continue along its rambling trajectory. (Written mostly on the backside of the TicketWeb printout for the Golem show, composed half on a bench in Union Square Park and half on the Metro North train to Crestwood, it carries a haphazard quality that I'm not editing away. I'm posting it for Katya as is.)

So, yes, my life has been beautiful lately. I didn't mention this before, but that's the main point. Things have been really good, in that deep-down way that's impossible to deny. It's not so much that things are changing externally, it's more like my roots found bottom at the same time I realized I've grown six or seven feet taller, well, that is, if I were a tree. You get the picture. And of course, waking up to this reality only shows me how much further I've yet to go. But I'm not worried. Meantime, life is not exactly pleasant. For one, Andy died last Thursday. Andy's the husband of a friend, and he died unexpectedly, much too young, without warning. His funeral was yesterday. And secondly, Rachel is leaving NY this weekend. It seems she showed up in Crestwood just long enough ensure I got a good sense of direction, and her work being done now, off she goes back to the Midwest.

But somehow it's all OK. Heidi called me. Katya likes my blog even though I rarely post. I am blessed with many good friends. I'm growing up. I can weather my brother's new phone reluctance. And Rachel is going with me to my Mum's wedding. So she'll meet not just my sister, but my Dad, Mum, and high school boyfriend. Not to mention the Oregon Coast and the Columbia Gorge. It'll all work out in a graceful parabola, or a rambling trajectory, or a looping spiral with photographic tangents. It's all good, deep down.

a surge of privacy

2007-06-07T22:29:00.001-04:00

I made my blog "private" for a few days this week. It's likely that very few noticed, and clearly now it's back up and available to everyone. As will probably remain the case. But for two days or so, I was overcome with the desire to keep eyes out and off. The more people know about my blog, the harder it becomes for me to write it.

I have an ambivalent relationship with social pressure. On one hand I could really care less what people think. "People" are not living my life, trying to navigate my circumstances, or understand my desires–I am. And I'm doing my best, mostly. But I am also aware that a good segment of my audience are living lives very different than mine. The vast majority of hits this site gets are from the Midwest, and I have some vague idea who is doing all that clicking out there. My Midwestern friends write with eloquence and humor about their children, their husbands, their in-laws, their priests, their homes. And that is as it should be. But living sans husband and offspring in New York, my concerns are not so, er, obvious. (Would this be a good place to mention that I absolutely hate baby showers?) Back to the point: I don't really care to please people and yet I get all cagey and unhappy when I feel I might be being, yes, judged. I imagine people's mild concern radiating at me from the other side of the computer screen and I get annoyed, quickly. I want to yell, "Well, then, you try this if you've got so many opinions!"

I don't hate being single. In fact, I like it. I can read in bed as long as I want, in fact I can pretty much read whenever I want, except for at work. I can go out whenever I like, wherever I'd like. For example, the plans for this coming weekend include a meadering drive through Yonkers in a quest for a rumored abandoned electrical plant (check flickr next week for photos). Or I can take the train to the city, only my obedient journal and camera in tow, to see what I can see. Nobody gets upset if I spend all evening writing and rewriting a poem while eating cereal. I can listen to as much melancholy music as I'd like. Meals in restaurants are always pleasant, never rushed. Nobody feeds off my body. I sleep all night long. I only do my own dishes. I don't have to carry diapers or wear practical shoes. And I still get to anticipate first kisses. I'm not saying I don't want to get married or have kids, I'm saying I'm not married and I don't have kids.

And I like where I am.

barscene with glasses

2007-05-26T10:08:00.000-04:00

Last night I went out the way most single New Yorkers do, the way people do on shows like Sex and the City, the way that includes bars, cocktails, and men who claim to know you from somewhere. Except, well, it was my first time.

Really.

I've been to bars before, drank, even chatted once or twice with strangers while drinking there, but I've really never gone out to a pick up bar (do people call still them that?) with the intention of playing the game. Most of my previous bar-visiting was with Veronika, and I think between her default I want you to die now look (used on everyone besides hopeless alcoholics and men with French bulldogs) and my reluctance to talk to men whose musical and literary tastes have not been pre-approved, we really didn't get much, well, "action." So last night was, hmmmm, entertaining.

I went out with the most beautiful woman I know, which may have something to do with the fact that there was no lack of "action." The stereotype turns out to be true: all you do is walk around with a drink in your hand and men walk up to you and start (mostly) inane conversations, if you talk to them for a while they buy you another drink. It was a little unnerving. I didn't know what response they expected from me, so I tried for polite, distant, and vaguely funny. I found myself curious, what do these people do with themselves when they're not drinking alcohol and talking to strangers? Are they really getting what they want out of this? All three places we went were packed. The men mostly seem surprised when I asked them what they did for a living. Am I not supposed to ask this? I wondered. Most conversations turned around my glasses (was I a librarian?) or the fact that I was from Oregon. My friend kept blurting out to people that we'd met at a Russian Orthodox Church, which isn't true, but it got a lot of play. I was asked to show my cross as proof, and then the men dangled their gold crosses in return. I was surprised how many of them wore crosses.

The majority of the men we met were lawyers or in some sort of finance field. They didn't seem too happy about it, either, and they were all drunk. The nicest award goes to a police officer named Rafael who stepped in when a Spanish man insisted we take his number, despite my friend's forthright assurance that neither of us would ever call him. Rafael was there with a group of friends from high school, all native New Yorkers, who more or less worked in blue-collar jobs. While Rafael talked to my friend, I more or less met all his friends. They were hilarious, sweet, kept calling my friend "Courtney Love," and were anything but sleazy. Unfortunately, they also talked a lot about television, and I had no idea how to participate. But they made sure we got in a cab safely when we decided to head over to the Samovar.

If I had really been looking for a man last night I think I would have been depressed afterwards, but it was more experiment than anything. Now I know what to do at a "pick up bar, "--hopefully I won't have to use this skill too often.

post joan didion

2007-05-18T17:07:00.000-04:00

I use this blog to make sense of things. To acknowledge the beauty in the inexplicable and confusing events of my life, to piece together a narrative thread that is my own. And sometimes things are more pieces than threads.

And when things are more pieces I find myself drawn to the beauty of less literate pursuits--of art, photography, poetry. More show and less tell. Visual art requires less mind and more intuition, which comes in handy when my mind had nothing to say for itself but "check back in a few weeks."

I took the photo of Rachel above after we went to see the depressing Year of Magical Thinking monologue on Broadway last week. We were both in poor spirits afterwards, and headed back to the train tired. Before we got on Metro North I stood and held out my cell phone to get a shot of us post-magical-thinking, and managed to capture this gentle image of Rachel looking down. It has to be one of my favorite shots of her (and as those of you who peruse my flickr site know, she's been my model most of the last year).

It is a challenge to write anything to sum up an evening, or even a week, better than this image.

dishes done

2007-05-04T12:31:00.000-04:00

I know I haven't posted in awhile. This is due, at least in part, to my creative energy being spent on photography (my flickr site, as Jules points out, reveals this) and on a set of poems. Which are not in any shape to be posted here.

But in the interest of acknowledging that Veronika's birthday is long past, I'm posting an image that won the heart of flickr crowds (over 100 views in one day), and which reminds me that sometimes I do actually do the dishes.

happy birthday veroni4ka

2007-04-20T18:01:00.000-04:00

OK, I don't really know what A-B-backwardsN-A means, but I'm guessing it'll work.

things to do on a rainy day

2007-04-12T16:54:00.000-04:00

1. Write Emails in mock Victorian caps, e.g... "I am at my Wits End with the lovely Spring Weather. If the Daffodils have not yet been Flooded from their beds and Floated Down the Gutter, I'm sure they will soon" and "My laptop goes All Black from time to time, and Nothing can be done to Revive It; I suspect I will have to Break Down and purchase a Stationary Unit."

2. Complain bitterly about God's lack of foresight as regards me personally.

3. Earl Gray tea with honey and half & half, Italian truffle cheese, and black seedless grapes from Chile. Follow up in a few hours with Grey Goose vodka, English white Stilton with blueberries, and dark chocolate covered crystallized ginger.

4. Photoshop + Flickr

5. Call Jenny. A brief conversation ensues, followed by a sudden cry, a crash, and dead line. Further calls get only the sound of a fax connection.

6. Plan the opening scene for an autobiographical film. Tight shot of rain streaming down front window of car, red traffic light out-of-focus in background. Windshield wiper comes in and out of view. Slow pan to me, wearing flowered blue corduroy jacket and violet knit half-mitts, sitting pensively at steering wheel. I suddenly turn and stick my tongue out at person in passenger seat.

7. Read The Onion online.

8. Read next chapter of Lincoln's Melancholy (or current biography of excessively-serious, depressed yet heroic character, usually exhibiting mystical leanings of some sort). This doesn't help.

9. Take 258 photos of rain on my windows.

10. Call Rachel and see if I can come over and watch reruns of The Simpsons.

and so it goes--r.i.p. kurt vonnegut...

2007-04-12T09:46:00.000-04:00

Photo of Kurt Vonnegut, taken from the New York Times, via DevBeep on Flickr

Kurt Vonnegut died last night at the age of 84, in his home in Manhattan. In his honor, I'm quoting him at length here in a humorous reflection on what women really want. A few years ago I sent this around to my friends as high-style spam, so some of you may have read this already:

* * *

OK, now let's have some fun. Let's talk about sex. Let's talk about women. Freud said he didn't know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.

What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn't get so mad at them.

Why are so many people getting divorced today? It's because most of us don't have extended families anymore. I used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more people to tell dumb jokes to.

A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys.

But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it's a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it's a man.

When a couple has an argument, they may think it's about money or power or sex, or how to raise the kids, or whatever. What they're really saying to each other, though, without realizing it, is this:

"You are not enough people!"

I met a man from Nigeria one time, an Ibo who had six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family.

They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages, sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle it, and say how pretty it was, or handsome.

Wouldn't you have loved to be that baby?
Kurt Vonnegut
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

* * *

By the way, here's another KV tribute, on Indexed (click here).

living without fiction

2007-04-10T12:57:00.000-04:00

I don't read novels anymore. Or at least only rarely. For years now it's been biographies, autobiographies, essays, personal histories, journals, ethical reflections and the like. But I used to live on fiction. As a little girl I would stay up late into the night reading--a word or two at a time--by the lit control dial on my electric blanket. Sometimes a shaft of moonlight from the window would help--needless to say, I now wear glasses.

I read anything that began well enough to get me through the first ten pages--Moby Dick, the Book of Revelation, Pinkwater's The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death. I even made a good attempt at Plato's Republic. We didn't have a television at home so the weekly trip to the public library was well anticipated. We were allowed five books a week, and in my opinion far too few to get me through until next Saturday.

My parents, perhaps troubled by my unabashed reading of such "grown-up" fiction as Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, imposed the rule that library books had to come from the "juvenile" section of the library. In fifth or sixth grade I began to venture out of juvenile section and creep around the "adult" stacks, careful to avoid my father, who was more likely than not perusing a boring book on woodworking or wildflowers. Lucky for me his no-nonsense books were shelved at a safe distance from the juicy fiction aisles I was interested in. I would carefully select one or two books from the "adult" section and hide them under my other books. This was how I read Gone with the Wind, the rather trashy North and South trilogy, as well as glossy history books documenting the Roman Empire--on which I was nursing a girlish crush.

My mother made it known that I was too young to read certain books we had on the shelves at home, such as Brontë's Wuthering Heights. Which of course only ensured it was read in the dead of night by electric blanket light. And, as you can imagine, the wailing sobs of Catherine's ghost were only more bone-chilling in my darkened childhood bedroom.

Sooner or later my parents gave up on controlling my reading. Our little home-schooled, wood-burning, vegetable-growing Christian family was beginning to betray signs of disillusion, and what I read became less important. In fact, as family life became tense, I dug further down into my books. And I passed the reading bug onto my younger brother. One my fondest childhood memories is of us under layers of quilts in our cold, wood-heated home, reading Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.

But as I sit here, writing on my laptop in well-lit bed far from my childhood home, my novels pile up unread. I crave stories of the real. For example, Luke's amusing Oedipal misbehavior, Jenny's attempts to free grieving balloons from trees, or (my current book) an interpretive history entitled Lincoln's Melancholy. I want to read the mass of lives considered, suffered, hammered-out, well lived: I'm just plumb fictioned out.

paschal pumps

2007-04-06T23:10:00.000-04:00

It was snowing and we were hungry--scouting out a Mexican restaurant on the Upper East Side while the theatrical sky funneled sun and snow between buildings. I'd suggested a tiny French Caribbean place with organic escargot, but my companion thought the space too small and dark. So I lit a cigarette and drove South.

It was Holy Thursday. I'd spent the morning singing at liturgy, where (to my surprise) I began to cry during the service. As we drove down Second Avenue I wondered at my tears. This Pascha is the first in five years that I've chosen to celebrate in New York, at a parish I more or less attend. Staying in town for Pascha is admitting I live here--and so many of my friends live far away.

We found a place to park on a brownstone and tree-lined street in the eighties. A turquoise awning on Second Avenue promised Mexican, and we headed in that direction. Half-way down the block I stopped short. An elegant pair of low-heeled, buckle-toed, black leather pumps rested on a brick ledge next to the sidewalk. They sat there, gazing up at me.

I knew immediately they were my size. And, as if I always happen upon shoes this way, I unzipped my boot and nestled my foot down into the stylish little pump. It fit perfectly. The snow continued to fall while my companion stared at me, blinking incredulously. I glanced around. Did someone head out for a walk, forgetting her shoes? Or did she leave them here on purpose, hoping someone who loved them would find them? Garbage bags lined the curb, but the shoes sat by themselves on the opposite side of the sidewalk. No one appeared at the door of the nearest brownstone to scold me. I put my boot back on, set the pumps down and walked away. "If they're here when we return, it's a sign from God that I should take them." I said.

I got about 15 feet before I stopped and ran back for the shoes. The mere idea of somebody else snatching them was too much for me. I picked up the shoes and looked around warily, sure their owner would appear any moment to claim her Parisian slippers, and then stashed them in my computer bag. We walked up to Second Avenue but restaurant turned out to be an unappetizing Mexican-themed sports bar. "Let's go back to the French Caribbean place," my friend said, "We were meant to come here for the shoes. And now we can go back." So we did.

I wore the shoes to liturgy this morning, and stood in them through all the Old Testament readings. And I might wear them to Pascha tonight, if it doesn't snow.

"hello" in russian no small task

2007-03-23T01:12:00.000-04:00

I spent the last three hours sitting on a hard cafe stool attempting to pronounce basic Russian words. Ye-, no, ou-zha-, uh, kah-, no, sa-no, no? sa-na? Crap. OK. Ou-zha-sa-na? No? Ou-zhas-na. U-zhas-na. U-zhas-na. The only words that come easily are names of the fictional characters in the dialogs. The sentence comes out something like "Zdrstveeytye, mynya, uhhhh, zavuut Misha" and "Misha" is the only part that resembles a word. To merely utter a formal "hello" is beyond my power. I can't pronounce the first letters, zdr, much less the nine letters that follow. I feel indignant. Shouldn't "hello" be something simple?

Back home my brain feels numb, sitting here on the soft futon, checking my email (which scrolls down the screen in recognizable Latin characters, in a language I can read, usually pronounce, and sometimes even write). All that to say that I have really nothing to report here, but that I'm fond of this orangy text-and-tree piece I made earlier today, before I took up the insurmountable task of saying "hello" in Russian.

evil tidings take two: not exactly a goldfish

2007-03-16T12:25:00.000-04:00

Photo of Eric in Central Park

It's been a blurry sort of week, ending in an impromptu whiteout. The wet snow falling this morning was followed by hours of pellet ice plinking against window panes. Each time I stepped outside my office the sky had relocated itself on the pointlessly shovelled sidewalks.

It's not sufficient to say things have been out of sorts this week. It's worse than that. I stare blankly at the computer screen and feel unfit to write about it. Julia bravely attended the matter in a post entitled "evil tidings," and that relieved me. But then she went and deleted her entry. I am not equipped for writing about death, much less suicide. Parking tickets and bathroom phobias are more my level.

A genuinely wonderful young man is dead, and I mayn't merely prattle on about eyes pasted to toilet seats.

But how does one address the matter? Certainly not by comparing the passing of the young man to such a pedestrian occurrence as the death of a goldfish, as was done yesterday after the panikhida in the chapel. I know, I know: the whole seminary is grieved and confused about what to say. Eric's death is hopelessly complicated, pointless, and wrought with legal intrigue and personal sorrow—it is hard to know what to say.

But I've had it with standing in on things that don't work. I left half-way through the sermon and went over and laid on the floor of my office and cried. I didn't even know Eric besides an occasional "hello" (and, well, as my "friend" on Friendster). The vast majority of people on campus knew him better than I. But the circumstances of his death bring up my own not-so-fond memories of He Who Will Remain Unnamed meddling in my business, making me feel confused, dishonorable and ultimately (thankfully) indignant. And I was crying not for just Eric, or for me, but because how easy it is to lose our balance, trust people who are untrustworthy, and give up hope.

Tomorrow is Eric's funeral. The snow pelting against the window has halted the progress of at least one carload of students headed to Illinois for the service. But other cars take their place, including that of spontaneous Jenny with Natalie in tow. Meanwhile, I sit here and listen to the snow, and end this with Eric's own words used to describe himself on (er, yes) Friendster:

I'm just a regular guy who gets caught a little too much in his own head. I need other people to get me out of there. I believe there is a God and I'm just trying, not very successfully most of the time, to figure out what he wants me to do from one second to the next. I don't fit most categories on most levels, but I'm okay with that. I think we live in an amazing world and there's so much beauty in it if we're just willing to see it. I like to just walk or drive and astound myself by the fact that I'm conscious at all. Life is a precious gift. I just have to remember that...

-Eric Iliff

talk about phobias

2007-03-08T12:57:00.000-05:00

There are eyes on the toilet seat.
(photo by Stefano Giovannini)

fear of the walloons

2007-03-04T20:22:00.000-05:00

Nostalgia feared she was the last to hear of the phobia lists but I didn't see them till she posted the link on her blog. I listed some of the best below (and marked my favorite with an *).

I personally suffer from Theologicophobia and Homilophobia, which in general leads to Hadephobia (as fear of the first two leads to the last). You're really screwed if you have, say, Barophobia, less so if you merely suffer from Geniophobia (since chins are easier to avoid than gravity). I have no idea who or what the Walloons are, but I'm sure they're less common than public bathrooms.

Albuminurophobia- Fear of kidney disease.
Anglophobia- Fear of England or English culture, etc.
Apotemnophobia- Fear of persons with amputations.
Arachibutyrophobia- Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.*
Asymmetriphobia- Fear of asymmetrical things.*
Auroraphobia- Fear of Northern lights.
Bolshephobia- Fear of Bolsheviks.*
Barophobia- Fear of gravity.
Consecotaleophobia- Fear of chopsticks.
Dendrophobia- Fear of trees.
Dikephobia- Fear of justice.
Dutchphobia- Fear of the Dutch.*
Epistemophobia- Fear of knowledge.
Euphobia- Fear of hearing good news.
Erythrophobia or Erytophobia or Ereuthophobia- 1) Fear of redlights. 2) Blushing. 3) Red.
Geniophobia- Fear of chins.*
Hadephobia- Fear of hell.
Hellenologophobia- Fear of Greek terms or complex scientific terminology.
Helminthophobia- Fear of being infested with worms.
Homilophobia- Fear of sermons.
Levophobia- Fear of things to the left side of the body.*
Lutraphobia- Fear of otters.*
Metrophobia- Fear of poetry.*
Novercaphobia- Fear of your step-mother.
Ombrophobia- Fear of rain or of being rained on.
Ouranophobia or Uranophobia- Fear of heaven.
Panophobia or Pantophobia- Fear of everything.
Papaphobia- Fear of the Pope.
Papyrophobia- Fear of paper.
Phobophobia- Fear of phobias.
Porphyrophobia- Fear of the color purple.
Russophobia- Fear of Russians.*
Sesquipedalophobia- Fear of long words.
Symbolophobia- Fear of symbolism.*
Theologicophobia- Fear of theology.
Walloonphobia- Fear of the Walloons.*
Zemmiphobia- Fear of the great mole rat.*

an almond in my imminent domain

2007-02-26T14:48:00.000-05:00

A number of young trees along the Bronx River Parkway are marked for removal, orange flags flapping in the wintry air. Red and I were pondering this--how apt for the lenten season that these trees wore scarlet scarfs foretelling their death in the spring. Then she noted that I too was wearing an orange scarf. Ominous (I suppose). It was quiet in the car for a moment while I was mentally composing a sober lenten post entitled marked for death when Red said, "It's an almond in your imminent domain." I had no idea what she was talking about.

What she meant to say was, "It's an omen for your imminent demise." Lent or no lent, I really prefer that almond, thank you.

I feel a sin coming on

2007-02-22T17:05:00.000-05:00

This Anne Taintor greeting card has become a theme lately (it wouldn't be fair to explain why). Her other work, which you should peruse if you haven't already seen her stuff, is here: www.annetaintor.com

life, not unlike kickball at recess

2007-02-20T11:55:00.000-05:00

I didn't like kickball, I didn't even particularly like recess. And so I sulked, lost in thought, in outfield--praying no one kicked a ball my direction.

The damp playground of Oliver P. Lent Elementary School comes to mind when I feel myself drifting away from the things I need to do. The problem with kickball was outfield. I'd stand awkwardly on the soggy grass, far from home base and other players, and think. Think about kickball and how much I hated it, how maybe if the clouds lifted a bit I'd see Mt Hood, how my fellow students were mostly a crowd of heathen imbeciles, and how when the sun came out the wet concrete would radiate cloudy scraps of evaporated water. If--God forbid--a ball came galloping my direction, I'd have to run, feign interest in the game's trajectory, and try to remember who was on my team and who wasn't.

Other recess games did not afford me such pondering. Wall-ball or four-square, for instance, required I pay attention; I had no time to think, "I hate this game." And even if I did not play particularly well, I enjoyed myself and finished each game flushed and animated. Right then and there I should have sworn off kickball permanently.

The problem is that people who think too much also tend to think that they should be like other people. What's wrong with me that I don't like kickball? That's what the cool kids are playing. I don't like kickball and never will, there is nothing to be done but accept this fact. It doesn't matter if I think I should like kickball, or wished I could gleefully race around after a blue air-inflated rubber toy with sixteen kids towards whom I mostly feel suspicious. Kickball is boring, and there are too many people involved, and it affords me too much time to think in outfield.

My life as an adult offers the same story: standing in outfield, doing something I have little interest in, gives me time too much time to ponder. There are things to be done--bills to pay, resumes to send, toenails to paint. And merely that act, merely not worrying that there is something wrong with me because I don't like kickball, gives me what I wanted all those years ago: abandon. It's time to ditch cool kickball and go play four-square.

there might be something I don't know yet

2007-02-18T18:01:00.000-05:00

A recent email from a friend ended with these lines: "But I am not too concerned about this. Life is not so bad. There might be something I don't know yet."

& it's snowing!

2007-02-14T11:19:00.000-05:00

not to mention a coach made from a pumpkin

2007-02-08T10:08:00.000-05:00

I don't know about you, but I associate ballgowns with amiable woodland creatures. Now the ball is tomorrow, and I have a ballgown, bronze beaded slippers, a glittery wrap, a hair appointment, and princes and princesses by the dozen. But so far no woodland creatures have arrived with succor. I only require a sparrow or two, perhaps a chipmunk, a friendly badger?

All the ball preparations have left my bedroom & bath in shambles--discarded shawls, sparkly hosiery and velvet heels litter the floor. Sigh. The woodland creatures would whip the place into shape in no time, while I'd sing and admire myself in the mirror.

I believe in the absurd

2007-02-05T18:12:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, at church, my mind drifted. I wonder if the man to my left noticed when I sang "thee" instead of "you" just now? and Does that woman have cancer or does she like the shaved-head look? Meanwhile the priests wandered around in the alter, swinging things and burning things and generally rearranging objects. I tried stand straight and wondered what my hair looked like from behind.

And then we came to the creed. I tried to concentrate just the tiniest bit. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible...

And, as happens once in a great while, a joyful little tingling accompanied my words. Like the sudden resurgence of a crush you thought was well over, or the way a joke you've heard too many times to think is funny manages to make you laugh. You think "this is absurd" and yet you blush or break into laughter. I stood there repeating for the millionth time "... Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father..." And I think, It's ridiculous that I believe this. And it makes me sort of joyful that I believe something when it's utterly ridiculous.

Later that night on the phone, a friend was quizzing me about my faith, particularly my understanding of animism and how I understand it given faith in one Metagod--the creed's Father Almighty. I was hard-pressed to say that I believed God wasn't perhaps a stone or a river god, or my friend on the other end of the line. Maybe She's the shaved-headed woman at church. I don't know what I believe. It's absurd.

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth... and I smile.

toruisms

2007-02-03T02:15:00.000-05:00

Tonight as I was driving home from Manhattan, I got a call from Japan. I haven't talked to Toru in a long time, and it cheered me to hear his voice. Toru has a way of expressing himself in English that is both charming and bewildering. I was laughing in no time. I continued the conversation after I got home and wrote down a few inimitable lines:

"The problem in my life right now is that I don't know what I want to eat."

"The reason I said, 'I think I'm a natural born thinker' is that I don't think I'm a natural born scholar. Maybe I say something interesting; but first, I forget what I was saying, and second, I get bored. Therefore I am no scholar."

On the topic of my blog title "I am hope":
"You are hope? I thought Jesus Christ our Lord was the only hope. But perhaps you can compete with him in terms of human nature. For example, Jesus Christ the human did not know English. However, you are not able to compete with him in terms of God's nature, because you are not God."

"Being alone is not bad if you have a bathtub, a hookah, and carbonated water."

On being in Japan:
"I am not trying to stay here, but I am staying because I have no choice. This is like the food situation."

hope

2007-01-28T17:19:00.000-05:00

"After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future world depends."

--Wallace Stevens

parkwright?

2007-01-12T17:52:00.000-05:00

Thursday night I resolved to pay all my Tuckahoe parking tickets the next morning. This task has been at the top of my to-do list for, well (er), months now. As I was relating my resolve to Red, one of those irrational panic thoughts hit me: What will I have to live for if I finish all the things on my to-do list? Because, really, evading the Tuckahoe parking authorities has been giving my life burning meaning.

So when, Friday morning at the kitchen sink, I spied a white ticket fluttering on the windshield of my car I was pissed. My car has been sporting valid inspection stickers for weeks now, so what was the cause this current offense? With an impending sense of doom and dread (present whenever finances and paperwork collaborate against me) I headed out to my car.

To my relief, it wasn't a parking ticket, but an admonition: "PARK WRight." (And--honestly--I was parked right. But perhaps not wright. All I could think was "spell right." But perhaps it wasn't a misspelling of an adverb, but instead an ominously Tolkien-like noun: "Parkwright." But surely my neighbors aren't that eccentric.)

So it was off to Tuckahoe Village Municipality to pay my dues, where no one mocked me when I pulled out my pile of unpaid tickets. They just took my money and wished me a good day. I went to Starbucks to reward myself and to recover my life's meaning--which I found at the counter. They had samples of a new product, and when the barista turned her back I managed to put two more into my pocket.

and the noise was heard afar off

2007-01-09T16:56:00.000-05:00

I watched Rivers and Tides last night, the Andy Goldsworthy documentary. At one point the decidedly soft-spoken artist cursed because the elliptical cairn of piled rocks he was constructing kept falling in on itself. He was working just feet from the ocean and his sculpture would be destroyed by the incoming tide in a few hours. I asked myself, as I watched him rebuild, what did it matter whether or not he wooed rock into a fragile egg-shaped form when soon it would be rendered a fallen-in pile of rocks regardless? I was struck by his burning need to keep trying, restarting the creation process in the face of imminent destruction. And if all goes well, Goldsworthy steps back and takes a photograph of his work before it is consumed.

It seems a lot like life.

The urge to live, to create, to love and be loved, burns within us even in the worst of circumstances. We don't give up because we cannot guarantee the results, or because someday we--and everyone we know--will die. Or maybe we don't give up because we are unaware of the incoming tide; when it does wash in we are devastated because our work ends in a pile of rubble. But then we get up, aware now of the ocean at our ankles, and once again start piling up the rocks. And it seems to me that to do anything well we have to remember the ocean, and work in spite of it, work--in fact--with it.

When I was in college in Portland, studying in the library, I came across a passage in the Old Testament which has long been my favorite:

But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and many shouted aloud for joy: So that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people: for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off. Ezra 3:12-13

I wrote it down in my journal at a desk next to the window, rain streaking down over the gray UofP parking lot. The passage has stayed with me, not only because the image is both true and beautiful, because it continues to work itself out in my life. What makes me joyful also has the power to make me weep, and vice versa,--and ultimately these two different reactions make one thing. In the verse the unity was the noise. And the noise was heard afar off.

I cannot "shout for joy" unless I acknowledge also the weeping, and acknowledging the weeping gives me joy. I look at the ocean moving toward me and keep piling on my rocks. I absorb myself in their shape and weight, knowing that I cannot really possess them or even the fragile finished structure. If they collapse due to my error I curse, but I pick them up again. Stack them a little differently. Building in spite of the waves, hoping to finish in time, hoping to get a photo, knowing the sea is moving in. Goldsworthy said he does not create for destruction, but with the knowledge that the ocean will take his work and make something more of it, something better of it.

We work and then we give that work to life--to God, to the ocean--to do with it what she or he or it will. Our joys and sorrows come together; we build and be unbuilt, we step back and take a photo before the waves come in, as our structure crashes down, and the noise is heard afar off.

new year's party

2007-01-02T10:48:00.000-05:00

I hung my 2007 calendar this morning featuring a favorite new artist--a humble Russian emergency room doctor, Alexander "Petrovich" Voitsekhovsky, who recently exhibited his drawings in a Russian bookstore in Manhattan. At the opening Voitsekhovsky poured champagne for me into a styrofoam cup, explaining shyly that it was important to read the titles of the drawings as I viewed them. You can see some of his artwork here: www.petrovichbook.spb.ru . If you peruse them, be sure to read the captions; I particularly like Vaso refuses to go to his sister's wedding (8), Girl from Ohio State (78), and April (121).

I've uploaded one of his images here, reminiscent of a new year's party, entitled Dance Lesson.

don't dump me

2006-12-29T16:01:00.000-05:00

I'm a fan of found art, particularly the kind posted at FOUND magazine (link here). Last night I discovered this in TJ's parking lot. I love the implications as much as the doubly misspelled "thanks."