pop! pop! pop!
Please go here right now.
Please go here right now.
Last night I had this dream: a man in a green jacket was showing me how he'd trained his birds. There were three of them, each bright purple and the size of a grapefruit. One by one, he held them between his palms and tossed them high into the air. The first fell hard, all dead weight, landing with a thud and cracking the sidewalk. The second fell, but bounced back up. Like those rubber bouncy balls that shoot back into the sky. The third fell, too, but stopped mid-air about a foot above the ground and floated there. Levitating. Then it exploded into purple confetti and I woke up.
Anyone care to anazlyze me?
I love free analysis.
The dog and I were just dancing to Michael Jackson, totally rocking out in the kitchen and I just needed to say Scream is a great song and it's really sad is all.
Yesterday I heard both Sandra Cisneros and Dave Eggers speak (how star-struck was I?) about the same thing: what can we DO? During these crazy times, what can we DO? To make it, I don't know ... better? This is a question my friends and I have been pounding around for a while. On September 11th, the immediate answer was give blood. Everybody wanted to do something, so everyone waited in line to give blood. Those who can give money ("but, to where?") and those who can give time ("but, to whom?"). For me, though, the whole "what can I do?" thing has become a bit more abstract.
I am a member of the First Year Seminar Academy at Columbia, a collaboration between cross-departmental faculty who are co-developing the curriculum for the New Millennium Studies Program, a first year seminar for freshman focusing on cultural and community awareness, personal identity and types of learning. One of the texts we'll be using is House on Mango Street by Cisneros, and yesterday she came to speak with us. It was a small, intimate talk: twenty people around a long table with Cisneros at its head (she had a red leather purse with the word WICKED air-brushed on it. How hot is THAT?), and she spoke for a couple of hours about what she'd been through as a person and an artist. We asked many questions: one was about finding the balance between your job and your art (a major concern for our students. And ourselves), and she said, "I never once thought I'd be able to support myself with my writing. I always thought I'd have a day job, I only hoped it would be keeping with my politics, my integrity, that I would feel like I was contributing with it just as much as with my stories." She talked about teaching kids in Pilsen, which led to her thoughts on elementary education ("What is this No Child Left Behind thing? Our kids just need to READ more! I don't know why he doesn't see that, his wife is a librarian!") and, from there, the war. "My college students and I wondered what to DO. What could we do? Could we walk to class to conserve oil? Could we march in the peace parade? No--people in the peace parade were yelling at the pro-war activists and that didn't seem very peaceful!" Then she told a story about giving a reading and there, in the audience, was her "nemesis." A man who'd wanted her teaching position and had been very threatening about it, and she hated him, and told someone that if he came near her she'd crack him over the head with a bottle of wine. He wouldn't hurt her again, she was ready for anything! Except for him coming up to her, extending his hand and telling her what a wonderful story she'd just read. She went back home and told her students, "I know what to do about the war! Be kind to people!" That's all, that's how you make peace! It's far easier to march around with a sign than be good to the people in your life, forgive people, let go of hate, don't push people's buttons and, "if you have a landmine, DON'T walk on it!"
Later, Dave Eggers read at the Metro. The place was jam-packed with five hundred people, mostly young, drinking and smoking and laughing and yelling. He read some of those letters he'd written from the point of view of a dog named Steven, and told a story about how, after accidentally leaving a notebook on an airplane, he was contacted by the State Department. Who had confiscated his stuff via the Patriot Act. Who wanted to Talk With Him (he's working on a bio of a Sudanese refugee, so the notebook had stuff in it about Bush, Colin Powell, et all). Primarily, though, he wanted to talk about 826 Valencia, a tutoring center he'd started in San Fransisco to help students aged 6-18 with their reading and writing. They'd opened one in LA this week and are now working on 826 Chicago. Listening to all this gave me the same feeling as when I gave blood after 9/11. Like: okay, THIS. This is what feels right. This is something I can do that's right for me. What's it called--serendipity? To come from Cisneros and all these thoughts of "What can I DO?" to hear Eggers offering a program where I knew I could be of service.
So, I signed up to volunteer. This is the article that started it, and if you want to help, you can do so here.
This is the clincher, though: when Eggers was done, my good friend Joe Meno read. He had a live behind behind him playing songs from Hairstyles of the Damned--The Clash, The Smiths, etc.--and the crowd LOVED it. First of all, Joe was wearing a TIE ("Yep," he'd said to me last week in the part-time faculty office. "I'm wearing a tie." I've known Joe Meno for years and I've only seen him in a tie at his wedding). Second, the whole band wore ties. Third, the music was loud, and Joe was loud and awesome and everybody danced and laughed and jumped around. I stood there watching it all and thinking, this is it, this is the bottom line. I can try to be good to those I don't ... necessarily feel goodness towards. I can give my time to 826 Chicago. I can do these things and they are a contribution, but at end of it all, people are brought together in one simple way: by a good story (or song or painting or whatever). So what I REALLY can do to be DOING something is simple: shut up and get to work.
1. What was you and Ben's first date?
2. What would you do if Owen Wilson responds to the personal ad?
3. When are some convienent dates for you guys to come over for dinner and what would you like me to cook for you?
4. When have you been so riled up you've had to ACT (instead of just complaining, as I usually do).
5. Will you please do this: set a timer for fifteen minutes and write whatever random things come to your mind very fast without stopping un til the timer goes off?
and (this isn't as much an interview question as it is a question-question, and if I'm categorizing then #3 is more of a question-question also)
6. Did you mean it when you said maybe you could puppysit sometimes on Thursday or were you just temporarily blinded by his cuteness and unable to think clearly?
1. What's with the fish?
2. You and Dave have an anniversary coming up (hooray!). How will you two celebrate?
3. How does your writing effect your photography and vice-versa?
4. What needs to happen in order to get you off the futon and away from Judge Judy?
5. Will you tell us something about your current projects, as well as the when and where of your next gallery opening?
So I am a fan of Sarah, a super-awesome illustrator (this is my favorite!). Through her site, I linked to Lauren—
Sidebar: apparently, there’s some great debate going about the absence of women and non-white males in the wide world of blogs (isn’t that debate going on about everything? Absence of women and non-white males in academic positions, executive positions, political positions, et all?). It was reading Lauren’s response that made me decide to get a blog. I figured that I couldn’t weigh in on the issue until I knew what I was talking about (my New Year’s resolution: don’t get involved in arguments for the sake of arguing), so, now I’m here, one more woman to add to the statistics.
—and through Lauren, I linked to Erika. Her dog, Slammer, will be my Mojo’s best friend. They will have doggy playdates and Erika and I will be THOSE girls. The ones who set-up doggy playdates. Anyhow, I read these three sites nearly everyday while I was in Prague. These were the cool girls, the ones whose lunch table you want to sit at, whose hairstyles you copy. “I want my blog to be as cool as Erika’s/Lauren’s/Sarah’s waaaaaaa etc. etc.”
SO, I was reading Erika’s the other day and she’s got this interview thing going on. Like, somebody interviewed somebody and somebody else said, “interview me!” and so they did, and THAT person interviewed somebody else, and THAT person interviewed somebody else and on and on into a great big bloggy web. I read Erika’s interview and then left a comment saying, “interview me!” and she had my questions up in a couple days.
If you want me to interview YOU, do this:
1. Leave me a comment saying "interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you questions here (different questions than the ones below).
3. You will update YOUR blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Here are my answers to Erika’s questions:
Question: what sort of influence has your cool-ass father given you, and what do you find yourself doing differently because of him?
Man, I could answer that in a thousand different ways, but for now I’ll give you this: my dad called me up and asked if we could get some dinner. Now, I was in Chicago and he was in Ann Arbor. “Getting some dinner” was not meeting in Lincoln Square in a couple hours—it was a five hour drive back and forth, so, I knew something was up. He got here and we went to a French Place on Damen (Merlot Joe. Anybody remember that place?). We talked about school, work, the normal chit-chat, and suddenly he said, “So, I quit my job and I’m moving to Alaska—” Alaska. Kodiak ISLAND Alaska, like, in the middle of the OCEAN— “next month—” next MONTH—“do you want to come?”
This wasn’t a mid-life crisis thing. A shiny red Porsche thing, no. This was his dream, ever since he was a kid. He loves hunting, fishing, mountains, the great outdoors, the whole Henry David Thoreau-type life. Also, my Uncle Chuck lives there, so my dad would go up every summer and hunt doll sheep and, man, he loved it. He’d come back with the photos and stories and … this was his place, you know? And one day he just work up and thought, “fuck it (maybe he didn’t think fuck. My dad’s not much for the swearing. I’m the one with the mouth like a sailor), I’m going.” And he went.
Of everything I’ve learned from him, that’s been the most important. To run after your dreams, even if they seem far-fetched (because he reads this blog, I need to add the following: as long as you have money in a savings account. A health plan. A job waiting for you so you don’t A. starve B. call home to your father for money or C. eat cat food in retirement). It wasn’t the most LOGICAL thing for me to run away to Prague for eight months, or, for that matter, to teach college part-time and really try to make it as a writer, instead of getting a nice, full-time job teaching public school somewhere … but you’ve got to give this stuff a shot, right? My dad got to Alaska and fell in love with my step-mother a year later. That was SUPER inspiring! Like, he went to the middle of NOWHERE and found the person he was supposed to be with (likewise, it wasn’t until I’d decided to leave Chicago and take off to Eastern Europe that Christopher and I got together). So what am I doing differently because of him?
I’m doing what I want with my life, instead of what I’m supposed to be doing.
At least, I try.
Question: What’s going through your head.... RIGHT NOW!!!?? No cheating!
My tea is tepid, which is a pain in my ass ‘cause I like it really Burn Your Tongue hot and my puppy has started licking the radiators and I’m waiting for his tongue to turn black and fall off, right now he’s sleeping under my desk as I type, and he’s crying and shaking so I’m wondering what he’s dreaming about and last night I didn’t dream which is rare for me, maybe it has something to do with how early I’ve been getting up which maybe has something to do with me turning thirty soon (August), like, do you turn thirty and suddenly it’s like BAM no going to bed after ten and now I’m no fun, no more table dancing and belly shots and all those things I never did in first place but now might come to regret, although I’m not much for regret, if I regret anything it’s how guilty I’ve felt over things I had no control over.
Question: What is the best way to describe how you feel when you are up on stage reciting or reading?
How I LIKE to feel, what I strive for is like I’m sitting with good friends over a pitcher of margaritas. And we’re all, “Oh yeah? Well, listen to THIS!” That kind of intimacy. Ease. You never tell a better story than when you’re with friends. I want my audience to feel that connection, like I’m talking just to them.
Question: What do you love about having a brand new blog?
Initially, it’s been that I’m writing everyday again. In Prague, during those glorious eight months devoted just to my work, I wrote everyday. I could be real leisurely with my journal. I could describe every place, every person we met and I like to think I got a pretty good picture of our time there. Back home, back to work and the demands are back: be here, do this, read this, etc. and it’s all great, but mostly I miss the time I could devote to my journal. This blog thing makes me think that there might be somewhere out there reading this (like I read yours, and Sarah’s and Lauren’s and Betsy's) so I need to write in it. Then, once I’m journaling, that’s usually when my ideas come for stories—I move pretty fluidly between the journal and the “work.”
So, I'm more productive. That’s my answer: I love the productivity … and the dialogue.
Question: What’s your most favoritest song/band/and writer?
No WAY can I limit this to one!
Song: We Float by PJ Harvey. Also, this gospel-y group, Sweet Honey in the Rock, has a song called I Be Your Water that’s gotten me through a lot of crap. Yellow Butterfly by Tahiti-80 for me and Christopher, and, right now, the Israel Kamakawiwo'ole version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
Band: PJ Harvey. Prince. Meshell Ndegeocello. Nina Simone. Iron and Wine. My friend, Scotty Karate. Radiohead. Charles Mingus (they did this KILLER tribute album, Weird Nightmare). I saw Andrew Bird live a couple weeks ago and my world just rocked.
Writers: Tolstoy and Faulkner. Kakfa’s journals. Dorothy Allison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and James Baldwin. Middlesex by Eugenides. Fall on Your Knees by Ann Marie MacDonald. Tied for number one on my Read This ASAP list are Hairstyles of the Damned, Joe Meno and All This Heavenly Glory, Elizabeth Crane.
Question: You are a pretty damn amazing writer! How young were you when you started? When did you realize this is what you wanted to do?
It started with journaling, except I was pretty sheltered so there wasn’t a lot to journal about (even I got bored with my typical pre-adolescent ranting) so I started making stuff up. There it was: the fiction; however, like most young writers, I thought I should go to college for something “secure” (re: journalism) and I hated it. Hated the writing, all of it, so I went to Italy and studied European lit for a year. That’s when it clicked … reading is the best way to break through in the writing. I came to Chicago, to the fiction writing department at Columbia and it was like a big florescent sign: YOU ARE HERE.
Question: Is there any possible way to list every place you’ve been?
(this will be an ongoing list)
The Fleetwood Diner, Michigan.
Lukács Thermal Baths and Swimming Pool, Budapest
Two Happy Guys, One Swell Burrito, Martha’s Vineyard.
The Dragon’s Den, New Orleans.
FleetBoston Pavillion, Boston
The Strand, New York
Great Bear Brewing Company, Alaska
Kavarna Meduza, Prague
Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam
Shakespeare and Company, Paris
Sundance. Sundance, Utah
Riverside Studios, London
Cherry Creek Water Park, Denver
Saint Xavier High School, Kentucky
Boboli Gardens, Florence
Circus Circus, Las Vegas
Guell Park, Barcelona
Crazy Baron's Garden, Quebec
City Lights, San Fransisco
i just learned how to make a hyper-link! Watch: look at this cool project and this stuff that I take all the time and this great book that just came out and this and this and this and this awesome guy's blog with pictures of our dog, although, hopefully, I will soon learn the HTML that lets me post my own pictures of my dog.
The deuce at table seven is this little curly-haired girl and her daddy. She’s all Osh-gosh-B-gosh overalls and blonde pigtails, and as I set her pancakes down she looks up from the intricate architecture she’s assembling out of individual creamer and butter packets and says, “daddy, can I stick my fingers in your ears?” The dad is nonchalant, as if she’s asked a perfectly everyday question, and says, “can you thank you the lady for the pancakes first, please?” and she looks up at me all angel-like, says “thank you for my pancakes,” and then the eyes are back on dad. He nods, she scoots off the seat and walks over to him. He leans down and she sticks one little index finger in each of his ears. They look at each other for a second. The she giggles, goes back to her breakfast, and after work I go home and call my dad.
So I’m doing bills. You know, the pile on the shelf that keeps growing 'cause you'll get to it later? Christopher does all his bills online, but I'm still low-tech enough to be freaked out by that. What if they just take my money, what with this direct deposit shit? Seriously, I've read A Handmaid's Tale! Anyhow, the bills all spread out on the dining room floor along with an assortment of pens, a calculator and a big ‘ol cup of coffee. NPR is on. Issues covered in the past hour include: Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, the school shooting in Minnesota, tax time and social security. I could go on and on about my take on each of these but I'm feeling peaceful at the moment (so we'll bookmark it for a later date). Currently, the discussion is about values.
"What you vale is determined by what you spend your money on," says the commentator, and then she urges her listeners to look at their checkbooks and find out what we value.
Here, apparently, are my values:
1. March rent (home. Roof over my head. Workspace)
2. groceries (sustenance)
3. Health/dental insurance (protection? saftey? Whatever it is, I value the hell out of it 'cause it's increased every six months over the past four and a half years, hmmmmmm?)
4. haircut (uhm ... confidence?)
5. IRA (my future)
6. area rug, CB 2 (comfort? Aethetics? Noise prevention so our pounding around up here on the third floor doesn't bug the downstairs neighbors?)
7. Mastercard. THAT bill includes Christopher's Valentines Day present (love), more groceries (more sustenance), mascara (let's go with confidence again), books from Quimby's (my work, education and joy, as well as the whole value of supporting the small business thing) and PetSmart (my puppy needs Kongs).
I have to say that, although it sucks to associate the things I value with cashflow, it's sooo true. And a very sobering experiment ... I want to add lots of things to my checkbooks now--like charitable donations--so I can convince myself of my moral standing.
Does yours?
Suggestions?
About a year ago I had to take one of those personality tests. One hundred yes or no questions, such as Do you require structure (yes) do you keep your thoughts to yourself (no) would like some level of fame (d’uh). The last question was a fill in the blank: describe your self-image? I got stuck on that one for a while, I mean, how can you sum it up in a single word? I am a writer. A teacher. I’m blonde, I’m tall … in a relationship, a child of divorce … and on and on and how you fit all that into an inch-long fill-in-the-blank is beyond me.
But then, I moved to the Czech Republic.
I teach in the fiction department at Columbia College. We have a study abroad program and I’ve spent the past two summers teaching in Prague. Yes, it’s just as great as everyone says. It’s so great, in fact, that last summer I decided to stay. My boyfriend, Christopher, and I got ourselves a furnished flat on Belgitzka in Namesti Miru, a primarily expatriate community. Our landlords were Yugoslav, a French couple lived on the second floor and the only decent Mexican resturant in the city was across the street … Had I, at THAT time, been asked to fill-in-the-blank my self-image, it would’ve been easy: I was an American.
Prague is the only major European city left in tact after the war—it’s a true fairytale, all castles and churches and curving cobblestone streets—hands down the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. But, as you know, beauty attracts, and every summer Prague is over run by tourists. Many, if not most, are American, and they (WE) are easy to spot.
I’d be writing in a café, sitting next to a table of girls. They were American—I could tell because of 1) the accent and 2) the pants. Great fuckin’ pants, those American girls, especially those with credit cards who are fully made-up, who speak very loudly—“what do you MEAN they don’t have skim milk? Are you SERious?” —who flip through entertainment guides, who will go to the Roxy later, who talk about Doug calling last night, “he’s, like, coming to visit in November and I, like, cannot WAIT,” as they reapply lip glass, high-end lip gloss—
I’ll pause to marvel at my own hypocrisy, sitting here in my Chanel, my Ralph Lauren. How am I different than those girls? Maybe you can answer that question, certainly I can, but what about the Czech people? To them, the tall blonde writer/teacher was insignificant. My image was the same as those girls—we were Americans—at least, to most people.
“You are not American,” said my waitress at Cartouche, a steak restaurant that Christopher and I ate at nearly every week.
I assured her that I was.
“No, American’s they talk like this,” she said, and then, in pitch-perfect valley girl: “What you MEAN I must eat potato, you know how much the carb in potato?” Looking back on it, maybe I should’ve been flattered that she didn’t think I sounded “American”, or maybe offended that this bubble-gummy voice represented my countrymen. In the moment, though, I was very drunk on Frankovka and all I did was laugh.
“You eat here long time,” she said. “Why you in Czech Republic?”
I told her I was teaching Kafka.
“Io, Kafka,” she said. “He was bug. You smoke the water pipe? Yes, you must. Tomorrow you come to my house, we smoke water pipe okay bye bye.”
This was Marketa, our first Czech friend.
Since we’ve been back, everyone has asked, “What do they think about Americans?” This was actually our first question when we arrived. We were picked up at the airport by Vahog—his family owns the pension that Columbia College lives at during Study Abroad—and we asked him, “Vahog, what do people here think about Americans?” This was June, the war in Iraq was going strong and the campaign for November’s election was just underway. Foreign anti-American sentiment was much publicized and some of my students had sewn Canadian patches onto their backpacks, just in case. “We like the American people,” Vahog told us. “We know it’s not your fault that your president is idiot—Bush he stole election… it will all be right in November.”
Bookmark that, okay? I’m going to get back to it.
I remember thinking, on the way to “smoke water pipe,” that I’d finally get to see how the Czech people lived. Marketa lived in a studio apartment with her boyfriend. There was a mattress on the floor. The table was a piece of plywood laid horizontal on a crate. There were candles everywhere, and she pointed out the different countries she’d bought them in: Tunisia. Morocco. France, Croatia—Marketa speaks six languages and was living in Sarajevo during the war. Is this typical of how Czech people lived? Is my new friend typically Czech? No: she’s an individual, just like me, which became more apparent with every story we told that night.
“One time, I wait on your president,” she told us, pouring wine into teacups. “He was here for party and I am catering. We must keep our arms like this—” she clasped her arms down at her sides — “so his soldiers can see our hands.”
“His soldiers?”
“Secret Service,” Chirstopher said
“Yes, and he just sit there all night with this look on his face—” she set her expression in a creepy, Joker-type grin — “he is really … what’s the word, uhm … smiley?”
“Smiley?”
She flipped through the Czech-English dictionary. “No, here,” she said. “He is … ray-dec-oo-lush, no, LUS, ray-deck—”
“Ridiculous.”
“Rideck … ah, my mouth does not do this word. Here there are more—” she looked back at the dictionary. “Laughable. He is laughable, yes?”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. There was the obvious: yes, he is laughable. But there was also this unfamiliar thing growing in my stomach: confusion, how I could feel pride in my country and disdain for my president at the same time and, moreover, explain it to someone else?
Marketa interrupted my thoughts. “There is election soon in your country,” she said. “For which do you vote?”
“Kerry,” I told Marketa. “I vote for Kerry.”
“Good,” she said. “Now we may be friends.”
Our friendship with Marketa had two main parts: ONE. she took care of us. When Christopher and I got food poisoning, it was Marketa who explained to the pharmacist what we needed. We’d get text messages that read my Megane, tomorrow is state holiday so the stores they will be closed so shop today, please. TWO: We dispelled her image of what “America” was.
“Chicago is dangerous,” Marketa told us. We were on the train to her hometown of Podebrady. “There are gangsters there.”
“No,” Christopher told her. “Not like Al Capone.”
“There are gangs,” I said, and she asked, “What are gangs?”
This happened over and over, these words in the English language that I’ve never had to explain because I’ve always lived them. But, lived them how? What is a white, middle-class girl doing explaining Chicago gang culture?
I thought of teaching creative writing and all the gang stories my students told. There was one kid who came up to me after class with a map sketched on notebook paper in different colored highlighter pens.
“You said you lived in Humboldt,” he said, pointing at the map. “Pink, it’s okay if you go there. Yellow, it’s okay in the daytime. Green, you stay clear of, okay, Teach?”
So, tell me: how do I tell all this to my Czech friend? How do I explain this side of my city—my country, for that matter? I am an American, and gang culture of part of America. So is farming, and Republicans and XBOX and factory work and millionare CEO’s and all these things I can’t possibly understand, let alone explain, but yet I am being asked to.
That really came to a head this past November. Our Czech friends would say, “Why do the American people vote for this man?” And they waited for us to explain. It forced me to have to think outside my shock, my anger, my own political affiliations. I’d say, “There are some people in my country who feel …. XYZ” and in doing this, I like to think I learned a little. About the farmers and factory workers and CEOs and all these people who are the same as me except totally different.
Marketa sent us a text message the day after the election: Oh no! It’s very bad! I would like to cry! Shit! I don’t understand people who want to have so bad president! Don’t be sad please, I am sorry about your bad president and I still like you.
Marketa still liked us—because she knew us. But there were many others who did not—who saw us not as individuals, but, as Americans only. On the same day that Bush asked the Czech government for soldiers to replace Americans in Iraq, Fahrenheit 9/11 was released in Eastern Europe. Afterwards, Christopher and I attended a panel discussion which was silmotaneously translated into English, and it became very clear just what the Czech people thought of our government, and, by association, us. I felt more and more disconnected, which made me homesick, which just perpetuated my confusion: how could I be homesick for a place that was pissing me off so much?
A couple weeks before we returned to Chicago, Christopher and I were walking through Old Town Square. It’s was a beautiful night, a little cool, but we were warm from the wine at dinner. I looked up and followed the line of buildings like a great circle in my mind, taking in every A-frame and tower-top, spot-lit in the sky like a theater set. In the center of the square was a huge crowd of people, I’d say a hundred at least. Christopher and I pushed closer, wondering what was drawing them. There are street performers everywhere in Prague but whatever was bringing together this large of an audience must be truly extraordinary. I stood on tiptoes but still couldn’t see over the crowd. I could, however, listen:
Cue Music: Another day in Paradise, Phil Collins
All around us, people were singing. I was singing, even Christopher was singing and—he swore later—he didn’t know the words! When we finally got close enough, we saw one guy and a guitar, which he played badly by the way, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was the song, a single, stupid song that every person— whatever their nationality—knows the words to, and in that moment we were all together. There were little kids and older people and couples holding hands. The woman next to me had on a sari and she smiled, and we sang, and I didn’t feel confused, or disconnected … that night, I was part of something greater.
The night before we left, Marketa gave me one of her candles. “Don’t worry about being American,” she told me. “It is more important that you are my friend.”
If someone were to ask me NOW what my self image is, I’d still say Writer. Teacher. Blonde … but I’d also say American. What I’ve got to come to terms with is what that means for me. However, if there’s only room for a single word to fill-in-the-blank, I think I know what I’d put:
Friend.
Here is the problem: what I SHOULD be doing all day long on my computer is WRITING (I have convinced myself that blogging is journaling which is writing which is therefore productive and thus allowed) but what I AM doing all day long on my computer is wandering around on Craig's List. Which is very helpful because I sold my blinds there. And will be very helpful because I'll find a dining room table. But, tell me, do I need to spend an hour reading The Best Of Craig's List? It's like when you're visiting your mom's and you turn on the news and on the way to the news you see a rerun of Real World Seattle and you think, it's over in fifteen minutes anyway, it's okay if I watch, but really it's a Real World MARATHON that goes for the whole weekend and you never leave the couch 'cause you can't walk away from Somebody Else's (that's the important part: that it's Somebody Else) oozing, pulsing drama? My favorite is here
The best is the honey-jalepeno porkchop at Cafe 28.
Next is the lombo at Mas.
Then, Bistro Campange (with a Maria-tini. Or two or five).
Then, Setimmana's on Division. It's stuffed with artichokes.
Finally, I'll say the chop at Mac's because it's served with mac'n'cheese which makes anything deserving of being in the top five.
Last Sunday as I walked to my car, the singing poured out from the gospel church on the corner, the voices accompanied by a single piano and handclaps. Lots of people getting’ their Jesus on, but in a good way, you know? The best way, like at the Sweet Honey concert I went to last year and, after singing some political, spiritual, big-voiced harmonizing Love Your Neighbor kinda song, they started talking about the administration. And behind me was somebody’s wonderful, arms-raised, Praise the Lord-ing gramma calling, “A-men, A-men, get that man outta office!” Like, religion as it SHOULD be—love and kindness and badass singing. Like, Christianity would be a good thing if anybody ever tried it, not this close-minded Sponge Bobbin' Passion of the Christ stuff (WHAT? Two hours of whipping the shit out of a man is supposed to educate me on his teachings? Why didn’tcha tell us the man’s story, Mel? FYI: I saw the film so I wouldn’t be a hypocrite. My Republican Uncle said, upon my asking if he’d seen Fahrenheit 9/11, “I’m not going to spend my money on that crap.” “How can you say something’s crap if you haven’t seen it?” I asked, and—of course—I was right. So, later, when someone asked me if I’d seen Passion of the Christ and I replied, “I’m not going to spend my money on that cr—” I realized I sucked and needed to watch it. NOW, I can call it crap with authority, although the make-up job is maybe the best I’ve ever seen. Always find the good, that’s my motto)-watching illogical unkind ignorance, nosir, that’s not what I hear coming from the church on my street corner. I hear me some love.
So I read this and decided that I need to prepare a living will. ASAP. In the meantime, let's get it in (unofficial) print: were something to happen to me that would put me in a vegetative state, I do NOT want to be kept alive by any machines or tubes or devices that make whirly sounds and I CERTAINLY don't want any political decision made in my name.
My dad, who, FYI, is the coolest guy on the planet, is retiring at the end of this year and needs our help deciding what to do next. I should tell you that he lives on Kodiak Island, Alaska. That he built his own fishing boat in the backyard (this is not a wooden canoe. This is a metal, welded, multi-engine salmon trolling vessel with beds and a wood-burning stove and GPS). That he hunts elk and caribou and moose (for all you enviornmentalists/PETA-ists that are preparing to send me attack-comments about fur and life and death and pain, please instead send an EXPLAIN THE HUNTING THING request and I will do so. Thank you. Okay). That he climbs mountains and works out all the time and is, like, aging backwards. That he has spent his entire career in education and his current job is the principal at Peterson, an elementary school for the children of the coast guard.
So, armed with this necessary background information, please help me help my dad decide his future.
Should Megan's Dad ...
(and allow me to add that these are actual possibilities for him. I have not fictionalized them at all)
A. spend a year on an African safari
B. buy a lodge and take Alaskan tourists on fishing trips
C. travel the state and help train new Alaskan educators how to do the best job for their students
D. spend the fall hunting deer in Michigan and hanging out with me in Chicago
E. buy a kayak
What does URLs to Ping mean?
So I said, "Christopher, can I have a blog?" and instead of being condescending and pointing out the zillions of websites I could go to and set up my own blog in a very independent way, he helped me. And when I started whining about making it look pretty, he slid in this photo I love by my friend Kat Powers, of stars in the lake in the early morning (she shot it off a pier in Roger's Park). It wasn't until I tried my (critically acclaimed) Oh My Officer, Was I Speeding? routine, complete with batting eyelashes and demure smile and syrup-sweet voice asking, "Will you help me include pictures?" that he cracked and told me this weekend we'd begin my HTML training. HTML. A daunting task, but then I think of those talking Barbies that came out a few years back that created all the controversy 'cause when you pulled their strings they said, "Math is hard!" and how much that whole thing pissed me off (this is where my friend Dia will read this blog and she and I will go to town about whether or not I am a feminist, and what does that even mean, and I'm conflicted 'cause of the (airquote) "feminist" who told me my freshman year in college--this was in the early Ninties, when political-correctness was on its rise--that I shouldn't be wearing the (fairly conservative) skirt (knee-length, thrift store wool) I had on because showing my legs distracted people from my intelligence and I thought A. but I LIKE skirts and B. I'm sick of all these things that LIMIT me and C. I don't WANT to be a feminist, no, I don't want to be a feminist like SHE'S a feminist, but, wait, what differentiates us, which is the same way I feel about being an American after living outside the country during the election which is another blog entry altogether) and I'll just learn the damn HTML so when someone pulls my string they don't end up questioning my independence.
When I was a kid I could tongue twist like nobody's business. I could say them superfast, five times fast, it was my own special parlor trick. "Do it, Megan," the kids would say, and I'd go "Shesellssea-shellsbytheseashoreshesellsseashells ... " These days, though, I think I've lost my touch. I get all mixed up. I she when I should sea, shell when I'm supposed to sell.
I figure I just need to get back into practice. Get back to playing with words, like this: "theopolis thistler, the successful thistle sifter, thrust three thousand thistles through the tip of his tongue."
"Three thousand thistles through the tip of his tongue."
"Tip of his tongue."
"ttttttttt."