don't let him hear you call him a monkey

Mom made it clear that I was irritating her and she didn't want me to come over at all today.

So I hung out at the hotel in the morning and in the afternoon I took Dad to see a movie...

I didn't figure he'd follow it completely but I hoped he'd at least get the whole Darth Vader transformation thing.

Pre-movie conversation:

"You remember Darth Vader, right?" "Um, yeah." "Well this is how he got to be a bad guy." "Ah."

Post-movie conversation:

Me: "You remember Princess Leia, right? I was her for Halloween in first grade?"

Dad: "No.... no, I don't remember that." [traumatic, but that's another post]

Me: "Big buns on the sides of her head? Long white dress?"

Dad: "Ummmmmm.... no."

Me: "Well, she was one of the babies at the end of the film."

Dad: "Ah."

[silence]

Dad: "I think I did see some of the other [Star Wars films], because—that monkey guy, or whatever he was, I remembered him."

Me: "Monkey????"

Dad: "Yeah, you know, the monkey."

I first think of the weird animal that Obi Wan Kenobi rides around in the big sinkhole. Can't be. General Grievous? He crawls around a bit but he's more bug-like. Grasping for straws, I briefly consider that he's referring to Obi Wan himself (after all he's increasingly hirsute here) before realizing...

Me: "Oh, Chewbacca!!! The big, furry guy?"

Dad: "Right, right, that one."

Me (pleased): "Yeah, that's right—wow, good memory, he was hardly even on the screen this time, but yeah, he was in the other films."

[pause]

Me: "And anyway you remember Darth Vader, right? The guy in black?"

Dad: "Ummmmmm....I don't know."

OK, fine, let's not push it.

The canned bread

Yes, it's actually called "B & M." I must have blocked that part out.

If you're bored (and why else would you be reading this?) click on the photo to read an amusing article about this food-like item, including "three unambiguously positive things [that] can be said about the bread."

If you're about to not-click, perhaps this caption (to another photo in the article) will be enough to entice you: "The B&M Bread lunar lander (right) turned an otherwise routine brunch into a hijink-laden orgy of engineering."

Ah, those hijink-laden orgies of engineering...one of the things about college that I really miss.

she's not so bad when she's asleep*

On Saturday I spent four or five hours sitting w Mom at the hospital. At the time it didn't seem like anything special, but in retrospect it was probably the closest to a mother-daughter moment that we've ever managed. I propped her up with pillows, tucked in the blankets, helped lift her feet up and down from the bed, filled up her water—you know, the stuff you do for someone who's in the hospital.

I felt really good. I felt like I was finally proving to my Mom that I could be a good daughter and make her happy.

The next day she came home and we resumed our usual relationship. I was bitterly disappointed, although in retrospect—and especially putting it down in writing—I can see how unrealistic it was to hope that anything would change.

Loopy as usual was here to say, over & over, "it's not about you." Right. If it were about me, then doing something nice for her would make a difference, but it's not, so it doesn't. She doesn't like, see, or bond with anybody. It's not personal. Right. Got it.

So is there any way to stop wanting your mother to like you?

And Rie as usual was also here with this little gem of inspiration: "Well, you see that? All you have to do is keep her heavily sedated & you'll get along fine."

Thanks babe. I needed that. And the twenty-five pounds of Thai food. All good. We'll get through this.

---

*My Dad used to say this about me jokingly (and yes, I knew it was a joke, it didn't scar me for life. He said it when someone praised me and he didn't know how to respond, but I knew it meant he was happy and proud).

Bin Laden describes the US

"Their aim is to remake the Middle East in their own grim image of tyranny and oppression by toppling governments...and exporting terror."

Oops, sorry, that was actually a quote from Bush describing "the terrorists." Me ineptum. It's so easy to get those guys confused.

Okay, okay—so I'm not the first to point this out. Give me a break, I had to sit through the whole thing, and it was too too obvious. It was like the speech was written to be spoofed in exactly this manner.

But, at least I was able to evade the flag video....for now anyway.

the cook, her wife, the maid, and her lover*

I used to get really enraged when people would ask, of a same-sex couple, "which one is the man?" It presupposes a necessity of dominant-subordinate dynamics in a couple, and that masculine is necessarily dominant and yadda yadda, you know the story.

Loopy took pleasure for many years in teasing me about this. "Well, we do know who's the man around here after all," she would say, or words to that effect. I used to get angry at this until I realized that she thought that was hilarious. So I switched to "yeah, yeah, yeah." But I wasn't really happy about it.

. . .

So in one of her recent prelim-tantrums, Loopy said, "I can't be the cook and the maid all the time around here." When I pointed out that she was addressing the person who had that day vacuumed the house, pruned the lilac, done the grocery shopping, the laundry, and all the dishes, she relented and said, "Well, okay, the cook then. I can't be the cook all the time around here."

"What's wrong with being the cook?" I asked.

She paused and reflected. "Okay, I'll be the cook, you be the maid," she said cheerily, and went on to make dinner.

A few days later, when she went to start dinner, I asked if she minded making dinner again. "Nope, I'm the cook, you're the maid."

A blissful feeling of fulfillment washed over me. At last, roles we can agree on.

---

*That's just the two of us, in case you were confused. I'm not sure how many distinct individuals are indicated by the original title.

god again

Thought about the previous post some more. I was irritated when I wrote it, but really, it was the same irritation I have about any issue where people just assume that everyone's the same (& *should* be the same), or else that there are "two sides" of an issue and the "bad" side is just a caricature. Christmas and elections bring out the same irritation in me.

Also, the reason I've tried to stop being an asshole--well, it isn't really what I said. More that I've been trying to become more open and flexible, gentle and tolerant, etc. The Buddhist stuff I've been studying teaches that basically it's rigidity and defensiveness that make us suffer and also make us hurt other people. When I define & defend my own “identity,” I have to define other people to define myself, which gets me tangled up in judgement and all these binary pigeonholes (smart/stupid, nice/mean, good/bad) that I just use to hurt myself and others. But the more I can relax and open, the more I can begin to see that everyone, myself included, is much more than these binaries. The world becomes a much more complex and interesting place.

To illustrate. We were early to the funeral people kept asking about Mom & I told them she was having surgery right then. I was a bit distracted and weird, and Mom's friends saw this and were so kind to me. When at one point I actually started to cry, one of them took my hand and said, “let's pray for her right now...Dear God, be with the surgeon and the anesthesiologist...” and she went through and described the operating room and the people in it and asked God to be with each of them and help them to be peaceful and focused and skilled. (She's a nurse so she could visualize this easily).

Well, the funny thing was that as I imagined all of this with her--imagined each of the people and imagined a peace coming over them, even though I didn't really think we were talking to anyone--the knot in my chest seemed to dissolve. I stopped trying NOT to think of the surgery and just became more present with what was happening and how I felt. I cried more, but I felt more peaceful. She said “Amen,” I said “Amen,” and then “thank you.”

So if I had been an asshole and refused her kindness, on the basis of a wholesale rejection of religion as “not my identity,” then I not only would have hurt her, I would have missed out on something that actually helped me feel better. She knew I would feel better. I just happen to think I felt better because I relaxed and accepted the situation and my feelings about it. She can think that God helped me, and if that makes her happy, that's a good thing, right?

Well, another part of my brain says, “no, it's not--religion is a problem precisely because it makes people rigid and defensive and unable to accept flexibility.” Well. That might be true too. But, it would be inflexible of me to define it that way.

Now my poor brain is tied in a knot.

I have to go eat supper anyway. At lunch Mom made me eat bread out of a can and crappy baked beans, and now she's going to make us eat this special ham that she's convinced we absolutely must try because it's so special. I'm deeply, deeply afraid. I'll let you know how it goes. Oh, and as if this isn't enough misery, later we will be forced to watch a video all about the American flag, that some right-wing group sent Dad in the mail. Is there some way to self-induce a coma that is imperceptible to others?

Damn, I guess I'm being inflexible again. Oops, there's supper.

god

[warning: material may be offensive to some readers. comments blasting me to hell and damnation will be deleted, unless they're really funny]

Handy tip: If you want a LOT of people to tell you to pray every day, you can either (1) attend a religious revival or (2) put your Mom in the hospital for surgery.

Sheesh. I don't think I've ever been so frequently exhorted to relgious activity outside a location where my presence announces my willingness to engage therein (i.e. a church). Of course I expect it from my mom's friends, but now everyone—from the cafeteria worker at the hospital to the lady who delivered flowers—is telling me to pray. And what do you say to that? "No thanks"? "Mango chutney"?

I mean, I don't exhort random strangers to "keep up the fight for the glorious revolution." Maybe I should start doing that.

But one thing always stops me from doing this (though it obviously doesn't stop them): fear of being an asshole.

But then, at the funeral on Friday, there was just such an asshole at the reception, and it was great. We had slogged through the Mass* led by an Irish priest with a strong accent, which allowed me some private moments of amusement ("caught up in the Lord" pronounced as "cut up in the Lard"). At the reception, I dutifully commented that "It was a nice service, wasn't it?"

"Oh yeah. Great that the priest had an Irish accent. That was really essential," said the asshole.

"Really completes the whole atmosphere, eh?" I said and we smirked at each other. Nobody else was at all amused. But it was a little moment of reality that helped me stay sane. So who knows. Maybe if I were more of an asshole, I'd be helping others stay sane. They do, after all, have nothing to lose but their chains.**

This reminds me of Franklin's recent reference to my difficulties with "suffering fools gladly," and I have been contemplating a post confessing my past sins in that department, and defending myself that I'm not like that anymore. Even though maybe I am a little. But the past sins are funny. But I'll save that for another time.

---

*including a bible passage informed us that God had tortured the deceased with heart disease just to see if he would really stay faithful, and only after that was he allowed into heaven (1 Peter 1:6-9). What kind of sadistic, fucked-up god is this, anyway????
** Our local bookstore cooperative tried to put its new ad campaign on the local public radio station, but it was completely bowdlerized, because apparently the FCC would object to (among other things) the slogan: "Patronize independent bookstores: you have nothing to lose but your chains."

One wonders (I did anyway) whether (1) the objection was to quoting the Communist Manifesto, per se, in which case, that doesn't really seem Constitutional—not that I am under any illusion about the strength of that document these days; or (2) the person doing the censoring didn't recognize the quote and just feared FCC objection to the implication that chain stores were bad.

I don't know which interpretation is less appealing: draconian censorship or devastating ignorance. The surrounding text suggested the latter.

Maybe I do need to start randomly preaching socialism at complete strangers.

side effects may include eternal youth...

I'm trying a new ADD medication that's supposed to help me be smart, focused and productive, without increasing my anxiety.

As usual, the doctor warned me of the side effects, but this time they sound great: weight loss and waking up early. Heck, that's even better than getting clear skin when you take the Pill.

Not that I mind being "plump," except that last summer I bought all these dresses that I absolutely love, and I can't fit into them anymore, so I'm reduced to wearing boring khaki shorts a lot.

I read some comments by Leonard Nimoy on "Fat Actress," where he criticizes Kirstie Alley for (basically) making a whole show about how it's so horrible to be fat. When asked if he diets, he said he doesn't like having to go to the tailor and have his waistbands let out and taken in, so he just tries to eat "within [his] wardrobe." That seems like a good philosophy to me: eat within my wardrobe.

So anyway.

Being and nothingness...

Anybody remember the movie "All of Me"? Lily Tomlin plays a dying rich woman who wants a holy man to move her soul into a younger, healthier female body, but it accidentally gets stuck in Steve Martin. I haven't seen it in years, but as a kid it was one of my favorites, & I still think one of Martin's best (along with "Roxane").

Anyway! If like me you've seen it more than once, you may remember the scene where the holy man thinks that flushing the toilet makes the telephone ring.

So tonight I left Dad in the car for a few minutes while I ran upstairs to get Loopy.* When we returned, he told us that a man had come and started up the motorcycle next to the car, and that had apparently caused our car's radio to go on. "It played for a minute or so, then it just stopped," he said, waving his hand at the radio as if half-expecting it to go on again.

This was intriguing, until some investigation revealed that the music came not from the radio but from my cell phone, produced not by the motorcycle but by an incoming call.**

So, you see, losing your mind can be entertaining.

I'm getting sleepy, but maybe Loopy will tell you more about our fun with Dad and his remaining marbles—for example, how he has literally forgotten the existence of tamales (shoot me immediately if that every happens to me), which he's eaten hundreds of times, and is convinced that there's something mysterious wrong with his watch (because it's five minutes slow and the date has been one day off for a couple months (perhaps since April 30???)....I offered to solve these problems by turning the little knob on the side of the watch, but he won't let me touch it.

Then again, when I muttered that Aunt Florence's phone number seemed to have changed, he replied immediately, "Oh, it's the same number, they just have a new area code—it's 408 now." Yup, that's exactly right. Visions of Rain Man and the toothpicks, anyone?

He's also really funny at times, on purpose I mean. At the funeral, a friend who'd had knee surgery, in response to my query on the subject, said, "Well, I still feel it—I know where my knees are all the time, anyway!" To which Dad immediately replied, deadpan, "I know where my knees are all the time, too." Friend was not amused, but I was.

There's more like that. Maybe Loopy can fill you in. I have GOT to sleep!!!

---

*It was late afternoon and the temperature had dropped to a more bearable 101, so even though he insisted on cutting the engine and opening the windows, I hoped he'd be okay if I hurried.

**To be precise, a Bollywood tune called "Kata kata laga," which according to a random google, is "the latest raunchy remix by DJ Doll" and "the hottest Hindi pop song hitting the radio stations in Fiji [?!] and across the world." More importantly, perhaps, when did I stop finding "ringtones" unbearably irritating, and start thinking they were cute? Was this a mistake?

this is fun, go do it!

C'mon, throw the poor geeks* a bone already!

---

* Yes, I realize it's ironic that I'm calling anyone else a geek, when the following multi-directional-ultra-geeky sentence passed my lips a few days ago: "I'm not sure whether to skip Batman for the socialist summer school conference call, or whether to skip the conference call and go see Batman."

So it's ironic. Just go take the damn survey!

p.s.

thanks for all your support via comments & email! I thought of you guys a lot today and it really helped. of course Loopy is the true heroine of the piece. this is what marriage is really all about.

Mom's surgery went well: not only did she survive, but to our surprise, it even fixed the problem! We all thought it would be weeks of physical therapy before her fingers would function again, but there she was making a fist (for the first time in years), and gasping out (in her still-mostly-anesthetized state) "Look...at...my...hand!!!" So that was definitely good news.

Mom & I reading a book, apparently on Christmas morning (probably when I was four or five).

Oh, and this is a minor point in comparison, and one I've already made, but I always forget how really hot it is here. If you want to try to duplicate the effect, try blow-drying your face for half an hour.

surreal

So, here we are in extremely sunny AZ. Loopy & I both feel like we've been run over by an oven.

Mom has surgery tomorrow to align her neck vertebrae. It seems to be pretty straightforward surgery, no likely complications etc., although the neck is of course a vulnerable area & anything's possible. Anyway, drama queen that she is, she seems to be convinced that she's going to die, and at the same time, determined to be brave for the family. So she alternates between assuring us all that this is no big deal, and then having "slips of the tongue" like "if I come home from the hospital" (instead of "when").

I probably have a lot of mixed feelings about this but I'm not really letting it in that much at the moment. I'm just sorta like, ok, let's just get through this. I'm more worried that Dad is going to have a stroke while I'm alone with him in the apartment.

So anyway, I just put a CD of my grandmother's favorite hymns on the CD player. Mom had it put together by a musician friend from old recordings, including ones from Mom's sister's and brother's and of course mother's funerals (starting with "O Death Where Is Thy Sting," etc.). They're all sung by dear friends from the past, etc.

It's freaking me out a little that I'm so detached about this. I just feel like I'm doing "my job," including doing stuff that Mom might find comforting. I'm like, "oh, good, she's crying and saying random things about what a wonderful life she's had, so that was a good thing to do." But I don't really feel much right now. I'm not even in the same room with her (literally).

But then that's the thing with her. She doesn't connect anyway. So what's the point of me getting emotional. She wouldn't find that comforting, just anxiety-producing, because she'd know she was supposed to respond to me somehow and wouldn't be sure what was the right response. But the CD, that's just right.

This is just really weird.

Did I mention that while she's having surgery, Dad & I have to go to a funeral of one of his best friends? He's a pallbearer.

That's what really puts it over the top into surreal weird freakiness.

Tune in later for more dispatches from surreality....

curiouser & curiouser...

It now seems obvious that not only is it ordinary to be lazy, it's actually quite sensible—after all, wild animals rest whenever they don't have to perform survival-related tasks.

This makes it possible to look at work as something that I would quite reasonably want to do as quickly as possible and with a minimum of fuss. "I'm lazy like anyone else, so I don't want to be vacuuming all night. What's the most efficient way to do this?"

It feels different to think about work this way. I'm used to thinking of work as something that has to be painful. I think I was raised to equate pain with caring: if you care, you'll suffer; if you're not suffering, you obviously don't care, and Not Caring is definitely a sign of being a Terrible Person. (Anyone who still wondered, up to now, why I converted to Catholicism at 16, is now perhaps beginning to see...

Loopy is the perfect antidote (hmmmm, is there a theme here?). She has been working on me for years now to try to get me to see that love and suffering aren't the same at all. She doesn't put up with being asked to suffer for love, and if I offer to suffer for love, she's impatient and tells me not to do that to myself. It's been a long time trying to figure out how this works.... But I think I might be starting to get the hang of it...

I'll let you know if I actually ever get anything accomplished as a result of this...

i'm all better now, thanks, no more therapy needed

Dr. Faustus wrote:

"Who are you and what have you done with birdfarm??"

Dr. Faustus,

I know, I'm worried as well. I've been strangely mellow and cheerful since Monday. It's quite freakish. I keep repeating to myself, "hey, everyone's selfish and lazy sometimes. Really it's quite normal, just human. I'm just ordinary, not a Terrible Person after all." It's ridiculous how simple this is and how happy it's making me.

For example, I went to FOUR stores today that sell chocolate, ranging from Target and Piggly Wiggly, which sell it cheap and in enormous quantities, to a hippie grocery store & a hippie pharmacy, which sell it dear and in fashionable flavors (like lavender chipotle fair trade sustainably harvested organic with manatee-safe almonds). And, I didn't feel the *slightest* obsessive urge to buy some and stuff it into my mouth guiltily (or to buy some "just in case" because what if I want chocolate and I don't have any in the house????????? Can you imagine the horror???).

I didn't really feel like chocolate today, thank you, maybe another time.

Call the deprogrammers.

I added the moon

to my sidebar.

Because Loopy did, and tonight it's a "waning gibbous" and "gibbous" is a word I just taste and savor and roll around on my tongue.

Sometime I'll tell you the story of walking to mass at Mother Teresa's place in Calcutta early in the morning, and looking up at the gibbous moon and why it seemed so perfectly gibbous...so almost-round and unnaturally luminous amid the thick smokiness of the third-world sky.

It's hard to describe that sky. Somewhere high up it was definitely a dusky darkish blue. But there's a heavy and oddly fragrant particulate haze—smoke from burning cow dung, garbage, and funeral pyres—that permeates the blue, and has its own color, a deep pink, so that the sky is blue and yet pink...and just beyond that, or so it seemed, quivered this moon, like a big fat glowing droplet of something sweet and syrupy... almost like you could touch it—not because it seemed close (it didn't), but because it seemed so touchable, in its fat pendulous not-quite-roundness.

It was just so... gibbous.

Oh. I just told you the story.

Well, anyway, that's why there's a moon in my sidebar. All seems strangely right with the world.

Why Loopy is perfect

Loopy thinks she's being unbearable lately but actually she's really been quite adorable, in a sort of insane panicky way.

Example #1: On Friday she stormed out of her study and announced that I was driving her crazy--that she knew I was putzing fruitlessly on my computer, hour after hour, day after day, and she just couldn't stand to see me making myself miserable and sabotaging myself. She was going to go study in her office at school from now on (an empty threat; studying in the middle of the sidewalk at Broadway & 84th would be less distracting) or maybe I could go take a trip or something, just go away for a couple days, because maybe that would get me out of my rut and anyway she just couldn't stand it.

The next day was Juneteenth as I mentioned previously. I left the house around 12:30. At 5:30 she calls me and says in this voice that is so adorable and plaintive that I could just eat it up with a spoon, "Now I miss you, I'm sorry I said all that, are you coming home soon???"

Example #2: I just went in and told her about my previous blog post. She nodded approvingly (while knitting away furiously at that circular object, eventually a shawl but at the moment much more like a lacy kippa/yarmulke), and said, "You just need to embrace the real you."

"What, selfish, lazy and annoying?" I said, half-joking, half-ready-to-pout.

She shrugged. "That's everyone."*

That was the nicest thing anyone ever said to me.

---

*Note: you, dear reader, are of course the exception; once again, the reference is to everyone else. Except Loopy, who is perfect. QED.

ok, wait, now I've got it

OK, here's the philosophical insight that's going to fix my life. Ready?

Maybe the problem isn't that I judge myself (as selfish or lazy, for example) and that I just need to be nicer to myself.

Maybe the problem is that I am terrified of being selfish or lazy, and I would do anything to avoid seeing myself that way.

Maybe I would much rather have a Serious Problem than conclude that I'm just an ordinary person who is sometimes selfish and/or lazy. Because a selfish, lazy me would be a Terrible Person who would not be worthy to live.

But if I have a Problem (capital P) that somehow lifts all responsibility from me, then it's ok, I'm not a Terrible Person, I'm just a sad victim of circumstance.

So that would explain why I assiduously avoid any solution to my Problem, because if I can solve it, then I could have solved it before, and the fact that I didn't, means that I was selfish/lazy/otherwise lacking, therefore I would have to conclude I'm a Terrible Person. Not fit to live. Etc. And I'd rather be sick, crazy or anything rather than a Terrible (selfish, lazy) person.

Hmmmm.

A couple years ago I went through this with the idea of being annoying. I used to be so petrified of being annoying, that I would constantly apologize and end up being really annoying. Finally one day I decided, hey, sometimes I'm annoying, but that's not the end of the world--some of my best friends are annoying at times (not you, of course, dear reader--everyone else, you know how they are). So I stopped worrying about it so much and actually I think I'm a lot less annoying now, although I hadn't even thought about it in years.

So maybe if I decide that even if I'm selfish and/or lazy, that's not the end of the world--maybe that will help.

Like right now. I'm keeping Loopy awake even though she's tired and wants to sleep and I promised to go to bed at 10:30. It would be great if I had some kind of Serious Problem (care to flip through the DSM with me, anyone?) so this would not be my fault.

But maybe I'm just being selfish. And yet, maybe I still deserve to live. Hmmmm. Interesting new concept.*

OK, great! This is definitely it. This insight will fix my life. Right????

In any case, I'll keep an eye out for signs of Dramatic Transformation. You'll be the first to know.

---

*We'll see if Loopy thinks I deserve to live.....

[insert constitution pun here]

"They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq.

Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it's worked for over 200 years...

...and hell, we're not using it anymore."

(one of those infinite email forwards - received from Amerina who is wonderfully selective in her forwarding... & I just had to share)

Malcolm X: esprit d'escalier

Supposedly, "esprit d'escalier" is the phrase to be used when you think of just the right thing to say—but too late.* There should be a phrase in English to describe that all-too-common scenario. O perspicacious audience, you may have guessed that one such scenario is the topic of my post.

Yesterday I attended a Juneteenth celebration, primarily to staff the table for our local bookstore cooperative, although it was also refreshing just to be in a less Madison-y atmosphere for a while.** And I also had hoped for some good BBQ.

While I was standing in a long, slow line for the BBQ, I gradually became aware that the two people behind me were talking in that artificially bright, slightly loud, performing kinda way that people do when they're hoping to draw others (in this case, me) into their conversation.

They appeared to be a straight white couple with a small Black boy about seven years old. I didn't think anything of this initially—there was a sprinkling of "people of pallor" throughout the crowd, more than a few with Black children—but it became clear that the people behind me weren't very comfortable with the child or the crowd. This was extremely annoying.

I ignored it as long as I could, until the man said to the child, "Look, on the shirt, that's the same Henry as in Henry Hikes To Fitchburg."

He was referring to my classy John Brown t-shirt (order yours here), which features a quote from Henry David Thoreau on the back.

The man repeated his comment, then finally addressed me directly: "Have you ever read Henry Hikes to Fitchburg?" and proceeded to tell me the plot with a sort of mildly desperate cheefulness.

I didn't respond to the man, but asked the little boy, "Is that a book you like?" He had been fidgeting and looking around nervously, but now he looked up at me and his face lit up as he smiled and nodded. "You like to read, huh?" Again the rapturous smile & quick nod. "Well, you should come to our table, Rainbow Bookstore—we have lots of kids' books. We're over there under the tent."

The man (I hesitated to assume he was a Dad because he just didn't seem to know the child very well) said, "Oh, yeah, we were there. I saw you had a kids' book about Malcolm X."

"That's a good one—it just sold," I replied. Earlier I had flipped through it with little girl while she waited for her Mom. It had the usual themes of Malcolm X's story: troubled youth, self-education, religious conversion, fight for justice, and the widening of his vision in his last few years of life. I wasn't too impressed with the illustrations, but hey.

He scrunched his face. "I was kinda surprised—that's hardly a lifestyle that seems appropriate for a children's book."

	I think I wouldn't have been as thrown if he had said "philosophy" or even "person." But... lifestyle??? What does he even think he's talking about??? What I immediately wanted to say was, "Do you know ANYTHING about Malcolm X?"
LIFESTYLE: BAD

But I didn't say that.

I wondered if he was talking about the "troubled youth" part of it, and thought of saying something about how kids grow up in all kinds of families and need to see their own experiences reflected in their books. But I didn't say that either.

I could have said, "Oh, you mean that whole 'clean-living religious guy' shtick? Well, sure, everyone has their flaws."

Instead of any of these retorts, I just sputtered. "I—you can't really—it all depends on—I mean—"

"We like Charlie Parker Played Be Bop," the man said, his desperation beginning to overtake his cheerfulness as he realized we were not exactly on the same page. "That's a great book." Here, I could have said, "Oh, Charlie Parker—I totally agree; much better role model. D'y'ever hear about that time he accidentally set fire to his hotel room? Ran out of the building drunk and naked except for his socks. I think that was what made him decide to quit drinking and go back to heroin."

LIFESTYLE: GOOD

But I didn't say that either.

I sputtered some more, fluttered my hands a little, then just turned around and resumed ignoring them. I'm sure they were relieved.

As I took my BBQ back to the shade, I realized I should have just said exactly what I first thought. I should have said, "What do you mean by that?"

It would have been fun. He would have been the one sputtering, and he probably would've dug himself in deeper. I could have just stared at him and enjoyed his predicament. And I would also now know the answer to my question, which is...what the hell was he talking about?

Oh, and the funny thing is, the Thoreau quote on my shirt? It's a quote from a speech Thoreau made in defense of John Brown. It ends (on the shirt anyway) with "I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave." Which is pretty much an old-fashioned way of saying, "by any means necessary."

I think that's another reason I was caught off-guard—I assumed anyone who'd read my back would know what to expect from my front. Obviously this was my first mistake: assuming the guy could actually read anything tougher than Henry Hikes to Fitchburg. Which, incidentally, casts a bear in the role of Thoreau.

That poor kid is gonna be so confused.

---

*
When I was a kid my mom used to say that (yeah yeah, Bourdiette, cultural capital yadda yadda), with the gloss that the stairs in question were the ones you ascend on the way to bed. Recently I read somewhere that they were the stairs you descend as you leave a house where you have attended a party. Either way, there should be an English equivalent. If you know of one or have a suggestion, please advise asap.

**The fact that it was not overwhelmingly & obliviously white was extremely refreshing, but after a while, it was Madison-y in a different way—most of the entertainment (in whose tent we were trapped at the bookstore table) couldn't sing and there was a depressing absence of signs of political activism or awareness—though there was a gigantic church tent. And the ribs weren't even that good.

how's this

...for The Philosophy That Will Fix My Life.

Distilled from Buddhism, therapy, Loopy, and "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff."

Every day I'll screw something up. That doesn't make me a screwup.
Every day I'll do something well. That doesn't make me a success.
Every day I'll learn something. That doesn't make me smart.
Every day I'll misunderstand something. That doesn't make me dumb.
Every day someone will think badly of me. That doesn't mean they're right.
Every day someone will think well of me. That doesn't mean they're right, either.

Trying to avoid the screwups and strive for the successes doesn't really make either one more likely. So just take it as it comes and keep going.

It's not about defining my identity or achieving some state of bliss. It's not about anything really.

It's just life. Don't take it so personally.

---

So, whaddya think? Damn, it didn't fix my whole life. Oh wait, the point is that it won't. Right. Arrrrghghhh. I was supposed to be somewhere an hour ago.

because the truth is, Joey Potter...*

You thought you were upset when Dawson found out about you and Pacey?



Wait'll that guy with the face full of worms gasses you and your true love turns out to be a giant bat.



Yup. That bad. Plus, you still can't act for shit.

---

Yes, we saw Batman Returns or Begins or whatever the fuck tonight. It was pretty good. Main theme: Mind-altering drugs are bad. Or you have nothing to fear but fear itself. Or it's not who you are inside it's what you do that counts. Or don't throw your guests out of your birthday party because then you'll end up trapped under a burning log. Somethin like that. Whatever. Mr & Mrs Smith was better.

---

*When we used to watch Dawson's Creek every night, Loopy & I had an informal list of the most annoying, most often repeated phrases. "The truth is" was pretty much #1, and if Joey was addressing Dawson, it was always, "The truth is, Dawson Leery..."

when websites get too personalized...

At Half-Price Books, I once picked up a book called The Case Against Government Schools. I had heard lots of left rhetoric about how the right wants to totally dismantle public education, but I'd taken it with a grain of salt. But whaddya know. They even wrote a book about how to totally dismantle pubic education. It's not even a secret.

Anyway, I wanted to email info about the book to someone, so I entered the title into the search engine on Amazon.com. As you know (if you've spent any time at all on Amazon), whatever you search for or look at, you'll see links to relevant lists made by other surfers.

So after I put in the title to this book, right at the top of the page was a list with this title: "So You'd Like to...stop hating the life that you have made for yourself."

At first I laughed. Then I actually got a little creeped out. I'm sure it's just some kind of coincidence...or could the computer actually have analyzed my wish list and reviews, noticed a cluster of books about being a teacher, concluded that therefore I must be a teacher, and then inferred from my search that I hated being a teacher?

Perceiving patterns based on larger implied schemata, comparing one indirectly implied idea to another, reaching intuitive conclusions—these are the kinds of things computers aren't supposed to be able to do.

In other words, computers are supposed to say stuff like "I notice you like books about being a teacher. Here's another book about being a teacher."

They're not supposed to be capable of saying, "Hmmm, the underlying message of your search topic seems to imply that you're having second thoughts about what I assume is your career. Perhaps, instead of the book you think you're seeking, what you really need is some help feeling good about your choices in life."

And even if they could do that, I wouldn't want them to.

Uh, Nad? What are you people doing over there, anyway????

but thanks for asking

Loopy is at her desk. I'm at mine. We are about four feet apart through the wall, so we can hear sounds pretty clearly, but words are only semi-intelligible.

She is presumably studying for her prelim, which she has been doing for days and days without a break, and will do for days and weeks and months to come. She blogs about the panic that this process entails, and lately her eyelid has been twitching uncontrollably. I feel sorry for her but there's not a whole lot I can do to help.

After three hours of silence, I hear a soft sound that concerns me. After a minute I decide to "give her a shout" (literally).

Me: "Are you crying?"

Loopy: "No, yawning..." (laughs) "Yeah, right, I'm in here sobbing uncontrollably over my laptop."

Me: "Well, it would be uncharacteristic, but you know, this whole prelim thing..."

Loopy: (laughs again) "Yeah. Right." (Pause. Laugh.) "Well, thanks for asking."

Me: "Hey, that's my job."

Sage advice

"Never interfere with your opponents when they are in the middle of destroying themselves." --Lee Atwater, Reagan strategist

I'm working on creating a summer school for the socialist organization to which I belong (Solidarity). Opponents of the school are trying to make it look bad by posting a flurry of suspicious and accusatory emails to the listserv of the main leadership body.

This was the advice that we received behind the scenes. It made my day.

Manversation

I burst out laughing when I saw this photo.


Three Harvard Deans stroll through the Yard

That's Theda Skocpol in the middle; apparently she was recently named Dean of something.

For those of you "in the know," the photo speaks for itself.

For those of you lucky enough not to be "in the know" (i.e., lucky enough not to be sociology grad students at a certain institution), let me tell you about manversation.*

Manversation: Toward an Epistemological Hermeneutics**

The term "manversation" came into use to describe an activity in which two or more persons*** discourse simultaneously, generally without listening to one another, while peppering their speech with key terms and references that demonstrate their proficiency in the topic at hand.

To meet the definition, the participants must use louder, deeper voices (compared to their normal speaking voices) and continuously emphasize their "points" with authoritative gesticulation.

In some quarters, the explanation for this odd activity is that it is actually not a form of conversation, but rather, a form of...well, this picture speaks for itself, too.


Photo credit: John Macken. Check out his website full of gorgeous, free photos (well, free for private use).

---

* This is the definition as I understand it; corrections are welcome, particularly from those who witnessed the birth of the term.

** I never remember what either of these words mean; if I used them correctly, it was entirely accidental. I think I misspelled both, too. My days as an intellectual are fading into the distant past. I have mixed feelings about this.

*** Yes, women can also manversate. Heck, I've done it myself (though I've been trying to reform myself ever since Bean told me to cut it out, about 13 years ago).

spoiled

i'm so sleepy. i'm supposed to leave soon (to take Mr. AWOL to address some more impressionable juveniles) but i just want to go back to bed.

i wonder if i can sneak home this afternoon and have a nap. living 45 minutes away from town does of course reduce both the pleasure and utility of "sneaking home."

at times like these i often wonder wistfully if any of my friends and acquaintances would mind/think it strange if I turned up at their house and asked to have a nap on their couch.

AWOL

No, for real.

This week my job is to schlepp an AWOL war resister around town. He's an interesting guy, and I feel like this is the first genuinely useful thing I've done in opposition to the war. Protests are important but the only way to actually stop a war is to dry up the supply of soldiers willing to fight it.

I've been taking him to local high schools. I look out at the sleepy, doodling kids and think, "One day you'll look back on this and realize how extraordinary this situation was. I hope it's not when you get drafted yourselves."

BTW, apparently they're thinking of scrapping "don't ask don't tell," along with allowing women into combat, so.... watch out.

Check out his website at http://www.carlwebb.net/. I'm not linking it--just cut & paste into your browser.

Like I said, an interesting guy.

Goblinbox

Mush Mook posts comments here from time to time; she posts quite often on Franklin's blog. I wandered over to her blog today (titled "Goblinbox") and had to bring back this delightful definition for you all:

Goblinbox (GOB 'lin boks) n., slang. Any kind of device (computer, PDA, cell phone, GameBoy, iPod, or television) that relentlessly sucks up all of your time and attention. If you're reading this, you're utilizing a goblinbox right now. You might even have a S.O. who wishes you weren't pasted to the goblinbox who's hollering, "Turn off that blasted goblinbox and come to bed this very instant!"

Why yes, often enough these are her very words (except for "goblinbox," of which we both were—afaik—heretofore ignorant).

On a tangentially related note, I also discovered that like us, Mush Mook lives on a chunk of land in the country, though she three ponds and we have zero. She also seems to have lots of dogs--exact number as yet undetermined, but here is one of her fun dog pix. Unlike us, she seems to be trying to remodel and also grow useful vegetables. We gave up on anything so pragmatic several years back, after the pumpkins killed the lawn.

But now a last few words about goblins:

She cried "Laura," up the garden,
"Did you miss me ?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me:
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men."

--from Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"
illustration by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

wait, what is that again?

I might not be able to post for a couple days, and I didn't want to leave that long self-involved blabbedy-blab up at the top, so I'll just add something here quick.

Sunday we went to the wedding of our friends Mike & Danielle (see photo on Loopy's blog). They make a great couple—they really seem to bring out the best in each other, to become better people just being around each other. That's pretty unusual and amazing, imo. (I mean, Loopy and I have many virtues as a couple, but I gotta admit that on a day-to-day basis we are more likely to bring out the irritable bitch in each other (as any of our friends can attest)(love you Lovey!)

Anyway, the wedding was lovely, the bar was open, the groom's sister was extremely hot, and in general, everything seemed to go well.

But I just gotta say one thing about one of the readings.

It was called "Tell me again, Love, what is a wedding?"

Ok, so I'll grant some poetic license for that being a dumb question. But here is what the poem says:

A wedding is earth and water
and a species of irreducible light
and the flat belly of a harbor
and a mango about to ripen and fall into gravity's caress
and the waves subsiding
and resuming their concerto in a minor key..."

Excuse, me, Mr. McNorris, sir, but a wedding is more like taffeta and tulle and a species of irritable mother-of-the-bride and the big belly of an uncle about to take the mike and sing another drunken Irish song before falling into gravity's caress, and the DJ resuming the slow songs and the single girls sighing in a minor key.

The thing you're describing there, well, that sounds a lot more like, um, well, I just gotta say, it sounds a lot more like hot sex.

I'm just saying.

OK, see you all in a few days.