tuckova

back from Greece

Greece persists in being very hot and beautiful. We saw giant turtles being chased like they were starlets without panties. We played games until we had adopted each other's playing style. We stayed in the water until we got burn lines where the salt had buoyed us up; water lines are the new bathing suit lines. We ate feta a hundred different ways, including on fire; elopement with various dishes was proposed and then of course I had to bring in the possibility of spouse-swapping down the road to keep things interesting and then there was that awkward silence like when you realize you're the last guest at the party. We observed all manner of dress and undress. It is hard to be a parent and persuade your child of the virtues of dressing for dinner when the woman next to you is wearing a hotel towel. We had garbage thrown at us while we were collecting trash on the beach (to compensate for being human, but then maybe we aren't the humans you need to watch out for). The things people will leave on a beach would not amaze you. I fell off of a raft because everybody likes to see a pratfall. We finished reading Tom Sawyer and had to get a book on Greek myths to determine how many pomegranate seeds Persephone ate. I won every game except the ones I lost. It is possible that between us we caught a frisbee more than twice. We explored the uses of yogurt and aloe vera and finally slept until it didn't hurt anymore. Then we came home. Pictures start here.

threshing

If you're really mad at the person you sleep with, like so mad that you think you can't even bear to sleep with that person or maybe just so mad that you want to Send Them A Message by not sleeping with them, it's probably a good idea to alert that person to the level of your anger sometime before you go to sleep on the couch.

Otherwise the next day you find yourself with a crick in your neck, explaining to the person who totally missed the whole thing that they slept alone because you were an angry angry little red hen, finding your grain of anger and growing it up and baking a loaf of resentment and ruffled feathers while the other person slept peacefully away, and at some point in your angry narrative you will realize which one of you was ridiculous.

Then one of you will have a good cry and both of you will have a good laugh and you will be very glad that the couch is as comfortable as it is because otherwise you would be up more than a crick without a paddle of reason, and that night you will sleep together like sensible people; I mean all things considered it's not a bad way to spend a fight, but wouldn't it have been better if... no, actually, this is a happy story all around. Another anecdote, an annecdote, the antidote to the sadness you would carry around if you didn't have the sense to shake it out, hold it away from you, realize that it's a color that has never suited you anyway, no matter how flattering the cut.

randomized for your pleasure

Squire finished breakdance classes for the year. The final performance was very sweet, though I only cried a couple times (I cry at children's performances the way some people cry at weddings).

Last night there were storms of such intensity that for a while, sitting in my friend's upstairs apartment, which has quite a view, I managed to persuade myself that it was actually a post-modern fireworks show, and different parts of the city were illuminated in turn, each beautiful and strange and eerie for just a second.

At the cottage this weekend we wound up going to a bonfire at the neighbors', where my extreme discomfort at finding myself in mullet-ville, where jokes about Asians are punctuated by pulling your eyes slant and talking funny, was nearly balanced by the facts that I did not have to play Voice Of America and that nobody acted insulted that I didn't want a big chunk of meat. Squire had kids to play with and that was nice.

I am not in the best of all places, marriage-wise. I told Friar that there was not a thing I could say that he wouldn't see the downside to, and it's starting to make me not want to plan anything or even talk about anything with him. I told him I could buy him a lifetime supply of his favorite cigarettes and he wouldn't be pleased by the idea. And he was like, "Something could get damp, and the tobacco could get moldy, and then of course where would I store them... no, no, it's not a good idea." and I bit a hole in my tongue and went back to thinking my own thoughts in my head.

We saw the first fireflies of the summer last week.

I have a lot of trouble with physical interaction lately, I mean my interaction with the physical world. Everything seems like a line and you have to decide whether you're crossing over it. Like even patterns on clothing are starting to bother me. You get stripes, then you can't get polka dots. Why would you limit yourself like that? So I'm all in solid black again, basically, because then I'm ready for anything.

Also, I went to town with the clippers yesterday, because hair also seems like a decision that means you have to make other decisions. My hair is currently shorter than an inch at its longest, with the exception of the braid, to which I have grown rather attached.

We had a great pizza after Family Therapy the other day, and the waitress realized I was foreign but thought I was the only one who spoke Czech and so addressed all interaction to me. It was adorable. Also when I tipped her she thought it was too much (15%, which is kind of high here, but she had given me a free glass of wine), and so concluded it was a language problem and brought it back to me and carefully put it in my hand. Small things keep my hope for humanity afloat.

Uh, Squire and I going to Greece next week. If you want a postcard, send me your address.

R. Kelly doesn't know from "Real Talk"

conversations I did not expect to have more than once, bathroom edition:

• This is a laundry basket. The dirty clothes go IN the basket: not next to, not on top of, not near: IN.
• This is my comb. That is your comb. I do not like to share combs, which is why you have your very own.
• This is a toothbrush stand. The toothbrush lives there. Please put the toothbrush back after you have brushed your teeth.
• Fairies do not replace toiletries. A real live human must be alerted in order for your toiletries to be replaced.
• The shower is not self-cleaning. If there is anything on the walls when you are done with your shower, please rinse it off.
• This is a bath mat. The bath mat lives on the side of the tub. Please return the bath mat to its home after you have had your shower.
• This is a toilet. Again, the preposition is IN. Not ON or NEAR or NEXT TO: IN.
• This is a sink. It is for washing your hands. Wash your hands before you leave the bathroom.
• This is a towel. It is for drying things, including hands. Dry your hands after you wash them and before you leave the bathroom.
• This is a cat box. The cat needs access to it. Please do not close the door all the way before you go to sleep at night.

Oh, really?

From an e-mail from Senator Boxer:

"While we can hope for wetter years in the future, it is important that we begin to plan for dryer years."

bitter shanty

Anger breathes on me until sometimes all I feel is the heat of it on me; all of me not just my neck. All day today I have eaten spoonfuls of vinegar and salt on rice, on bread, on anything that would hold them until finally I was just pouring it into tablespoons and swallowing it whole. It is better than tears and pours easily. Still the breath of resentment is powerful and all my natural bitterness and dirt can hardly hold it back. I can only produce so much on my own. Hence the reinforcement tablespoons of today's premium aceto di vino it says. I am not well-equipped to do battle with this form of suffocation and know these tools are lacking but know no others. Certainly my sugar resolves were never up to snuff, I cannot fight this ill-will with anything heartwarming. For example let me tell you a story about a girl who went for a walk in a pretty summer dress inevitably winds up with her grubby at the well with her dress torn and hair arrack because she wanted to look at spiders and found a pile of dirty magazines instead; that and more than that. Arrack is sweet Indian booze; you learn a lot playing Scrabble is one thing I learned playing Scrabble. Surprisingly it is not the summer heat this time and in fact on the second tablespoon which I did or did not feel burn in my stomach I thought maybe I don't so much feel bad as I make myself feel bad but you know: what's bad, anyway. Coming down from a mountain however lovely the view however snowcapped the peaks however pure your intentions, however all that height does not lower the sea level of the actual ground and in time you learn that you could never have handled that lovely high thin pure etcetera air for very long as you well know, deep breather. Drinker of vinegar and salt. You were meant to live at sea level always.

back on in

Oh, hey! We had The Awesomest Visit from "Uncle Pumpkin" for a couple weeks and I forgot to write about it. I dunno: there are pictures. I sort of forgot to be all reflective and stuff and even sort of wondered if I had anything interesting to write when I was in the process of talking so much. Then Uncle Pumpkin left and I remembered that I Have Words To Spend. So I'm back. Also, my friend called to tell me how her son is watching.... well. Okay. We can skip the "my exiting visitor" recap and go right off.

So the boys in Squire's class are all sophisticated and stuff. When I went to pick him up from the "week in wilderness" thingie, I asked one boy how it had been and he said it was "boring". I don't remember finding things were "boring" until I was in high school at least. You know that little window between when you find out how awesomely worldy you are and how trivial the rest of that world is (high school, for me) and when you find out that if life is boring, it's because you yourself are boring (adulthood, for me)? I guess the window is wider now, if it starts at age 11 and clearly being bored is a lifetime occupation for some people.

And then this friend of mine was telling me how she caught her boy, Squire's friend, surfing internet porn. And how she told him that porn wasn't very artistic. To me this is like telling your child that learning to drive a Trabant isn't a good idea because Trabants aren't cool. Which first of all Trabants are awesome, but second of all: Are you really going to judge joyriding on the basis of the car brand? No: stay with me! This is true. We had a family friend who, upon discovering that their child had been stealing Playboys, told the child that if he wanted naughty magazines they would buy them for him, because stealing is wrong. Stealing is wrong?! Here's what's wrong: kids reading porn. Leave aside for the moment my own arguments against porn (and/or cars): The problem with this particular argument is that kids can't handle this thing, this thing that sometimes is useful but causes damage that can't be underestimated; this thing that is absolutely inappropriate for children even though it's legally and perhaps morally approved for adults. I do tell Squire a lot of stuff about sex (and about cars) because I don't want him going off of the bad information he'll get from his peers, but it is made clear that this is Future Stuff. I can't imagine finding him doing something illegal and trying to reason with him about the quality of it.

It breaks my heart, these parents who give their kids so much beyond them. Were their childhoods so miserable, and their adolescence so marvelous, that they need to rush their kids through the one in an effort to reach the other at top speed? It just seems so terribly sad. It's not like I want to bubble my child out of his teen years altogether. But in my mind, adolescence is the time that you start taking personal responsibility for your actions, when you start to realize you can choose something different from what your parents might have wanted, and when you step up to the consequences of those choices.  It's when you start to understand the relationship between privilege and responsibility, where the former is conferred in correlation to the latter. And it's when you learn what happens when you totally screw up, in the period in which you still have a safety net under the risk of your fall. But what I'm seeing increasingly is a lot of the privilege and a little of the responsibility: I'm seeing a big safety net and a very low high wire. Kids have mobile phones for what? For the awesomeness of sending each other snuff videos (I wish, I wish I were making this up.). We knew to hide what we were doing if it was wrong; these kids seem to know that if they're open about it they'll be forgiven for the virtue of their honesty, as if that were all that mattered.

Without wishing to be all "I walked uphill through 10 feet of snow to get to school" -- because actually, I walked uphill to get home, and also because there was never so much snow -- or all "Damn kids on my lawn" --because I don't even have a lawn-- nevertheless. Nevertheless and still. Kids are human beings, and I tend to find them absolutely as annoying as I find all other human beings, but in this case I can see how they got to be that way, and there are some parents I really want to punch in the face.

pared, boiled, distilled

I dreamed I told you everything, that I laid it out in logic and compassion. In my dream you understood me perfectly. When I woke up, though, I was alone. And I had not yet said a word of what I meant.

how does your garden grow

So I had over two weeks of feeling like the saddest bag of mostly salt water ever, convinced that I was entirely alone behind a wall of sorrow, or alternately convinced that I was within a web of equally inarticulately tormented people and the whole world was going to hell. I felt like a mouse running uphill on metal, scrabbling and desperate and hopeless. I was somewhat less than delightful to be around, I expect. Then I remembered that feeling that way is really, really boring, and I slept for about 14 hours and then I forced myself through some steps on a "to do" list and then I felt better; it was just in time for my birthday and I'm sure we're all very grateful that I managed to ring in a decade with a modicum of self-respect. Now I'm feeling quite nearly chipper, all things considered, and they have been.

So, hm. We went to the cottage. Some photos are here. I pulled up about 200 dandelions because I don't want the neighbors to entirely hate us but otherwise we're letting the garden go a little wild to see what all will grow, instead of trying to cut it into some shape when we don't know what shape it might already want to be. First of all, it keeps us from being robbed like the neighbors on both sides of us. Secondly, we may have some beauty already there that we've overlooked. Like: we just realized we have tulips. Everything is a metaphor for something.

cup your hands

This cup with its damage. Knocked down, swept off the table; it was probably an accident. I don't remember the noise it made when it fell, when it shattered, though I know how it sounded because I hear it in the silence when I can't sleep. The frowny mouth open in its "oh no" shock and the cup falls, bounces, and then kkkksssssh.

 

The only cup I had, the only vessel, coffee and tea and juice oh my love. Damaged and irreplaceable. I set the pieces out and numbered, accounted. Step one, step two, and glue and glue. Pieces of the handle never to be seen again but I glued what I could and held it together. The glue dried. It held water. I wrap my hands around it now and it feels like more of a gift for having nearly lost it, hold it tight, precious.

 

You who want to talk about how it broke and when; you who want to talk about why I used the glue I did; you who wonder why I didn't throw it out; you who think I could learn pottery and make a new cup; you who, yoo-hoo. You call me and I can hear you but I am disinclined to listen, with my hands around my cup, its lacework of cracks are a map of my history now, and the steam rises from the tea in a beautiful cloud through which I imagine I can see the future.