tuckova

blah blah in europe blah

to quote another famous czech, "you americans are so naive!" oh, i'm kidding. it's just been running through my head since i tried to explain the whole "oh the horrors of parents who drink" thing to Friar Tuck.

the beer garden, as i'm sure i've mentioned, is an outdoor pub with tables that border a playground. parents sit and talk and drink and smoke and relax. kids play and climb and run. it is understood that parents are not there to play with their kids, but are immediately available should a child need help. it is understood that most of the people sitting at the tables are adults capable of taking care of children and, one likes to hope, themselves.

there are different beer gardens, just as there are different playgrounds, and one garden (gated, no dogs allowed, smoking sometimes frowned on when seated at tables nearest the play area) caters to younger children. we upgraded to the big kid garden year before last, where the tables are slightly farther from the play area, where there's more room to run around and where there are even more people who aren't parents there. the kids sometimes have to divert games around adults playing petanque. some adults are rowdy. we call this "living in a city" and i recommend that people who can't handle adult rowdiness in a public area avoid public areas.

in the 10 years i've been going to beer gardens, and it has been a near-daily summer thing, i have seen actively bad parenting three times. two of those times, the parent was corrected by another patron. one of them, the family was asked to leave. so there is a collective kind of behavior here, there is a willingness to judge, there is social criticism and even public shaming for bad behavior.

it's just that there's not this pre-emptive strike, this someone might be stupid someday so we'll assume you're all stupid right now. there's a willingness to assume you know how to take care of yourself. which, given the option, i'd prefer to have the assumption be that i am, in fact, not an idiot. i have all the czech grandmas taking care of that for me, what with the way i let Squire Tuck run around nearly naked (coat with liner, pants, boots, hat... but no gloves! he'll FREEZE!) and the horrific fact that i don't bake cookies. but in a group of people my approximate age, the idea of defending my right to be an adult and have a child at the same time? no. thank you.

zat choo ad never loffed me

this is your brain. this is your brain on monday.

a fun conversation to have with yourself when walking alone is the one that starts, "remember when we were in paris together and we ate the croissants?" it is more fun if you do it in a french accent. today i nearly moved myself to tears with the "and you said you would always love me, and that you had never loved me," and decided that perhaps street performance is too much at 7:30, even if it is just for an audience of one.

i finally submitted the formal request to let Squire Tuck out of school for three weeks. STARTING FRIDAY. it is a whirlwind life we lead, tuckovans.

noticing how much of my time is spent wishing i were small, really small. i'd like to fit inside your pocket. you could carry me around like christopher robin carried piglet. i sometimes feel so rank with my own obsessions that i doubt my ability to be of much use to anyone, even small comfort, but i would like to be. and i would like to get a good look at an inkpot, like piglet did.

today in czech class i misplaced the words for anesthesia, virus, and museums. the mind simply would not produce them in czech, so i did the thing you aren't supposed to do and went looking for them in english, hoping to trigger the czech word. interestingly, i had also lost the english words. brain the size of a planet, it's no wonder things go missing, but still.

i went to buy the bus tickets to the airport. this is maybe the most unprepared i've been for an epic journey. (all my journeys are epic). usually i'm packed by now (because i used to take days to pack, and now i can do it in an hour, but i still do it days before the departure, because i am not very clever about doing things). the bus i planned for is sold out (see? see how i should have planned ahead), so i had to flip out and wander around downtown trying to think of how to make it right. a man was looking at the lacy underwear in a shop window while holding a newspaper over his head to ward off the freezing rain, and he walked right into me.

i have a headache that is slightly larger than my head and a small furry knife in the back of my throat. perhaps i should pack just in case things get worse.

socks are lucky. rabbits are not.

there is absolutely nothing seriously wrong. there is nothing wrong, in fact, at least not as far as i know. actually there is nothing that i know. it's just the hint of something and i am all over the place with worry. a hat on the table, we all know what that means. and worse, certain words that cannot sound good no matter what. even benign has in it a note of evil, an assonant hint of the evil it does not (ostensibly) possess.

we smile, we joke, he admires my socks, they are splendid socks. that's something i know, see, is that i have a splendid pair of socks. they are lucky socks, i washed them last night so i could wear them on the plane, so i could give the poor security guards something splendid to look at when i have to take off my shoes. so he admires my socks and we talk about where we were ten years ago: he had more hair and i had fewer wrinkles. but we are the same, i am nervous and he is reassuring and we talk about his typewriter, which i tell him we would find maybe in an antique store in america, and about his funky little television, which you don't see a lot of televisions this fancy in offices. what politics and money hath wrought. i am almost comfortable, see, between the socks and the jokes about technology.

look, i'm okay, it's nothing, i'm fine. people have awful things happen to them all the time and this is not awful. some people don't have time for the luxury of dread, the hours of wondering and the overplayed scenarios, the eyes peeled open in the dark. what if what if. and that is all this is, the luxury of overthought. except that: this is nothing. you lose your rabbit's foot and you walk across the street with more caution but you should have been cautious in the first place. or maybe caution itself is what gets you into trouble. maybe you're looking for the wrong thing. six percent of americans they say, maybe even twenty-five percent, and they don't even know; and what i do not know could fill a vaccum.

and afterwards i step into the street and cross at the green and walk downtown and buy some new CDs, new to me. my ideas of what is unlucky are ridiculous cliches that even i don't take quite seriously, but my ideas of luck have always been personal and it's easy to turn it around. in the evening i make spinach and pasta and Squire Tuck eats the spinach and even doesn't flinch, it's good because it's good for me, he says, and this is surely a sign of good things to come, of right decisions made. right? of course it is. 

bridges

the sentence "at least it gets kids to read" drives me nuts when it is applied to bad books, because it is like saying at least mcdonald's gets kids to eat. i don't think reading is as necessary to existence as eating, sure, but i do think that the analogy holds up. some people don't appreciate well-prepared healthy meals, and would prefer to subsist on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off for apparently the rest of their lives, and if you're the parent who wants to prepare that meal day in and day out then i guess you can go ahead and do that, but don't expect me to think you're doing a good job with your "well at least he's eating!" and don't expect the school to back up your indulgence of your kid's dietary lack of imagination. i like to think that as parents we care enough about our children's health to see to it that they eat a decent amount of vegetables and we want the school to exhibit at least a basic understanding of what is nourishing as well. we may not expect our children to subsist on whole wheat crackers and fresh vegetables only, and especially at birthdays and christmas even i have been known to indulge the sweet tooth. similarly, one may indulge the darlings with a few "glittery unicorns and the dragon adventures" from time to time, but it should be presented as a exception to the rule of selecting books that engage the thinking brain as well as the pleasure centers. i think the reason we want children to read is not for the sake of the reading itself (we don't eat because "chewing is good for you"), but for the fact that it expands the horizons of their imagination and understanding and makes them better humans.

i have a more conflicted response when the "at least it gets kids to read" is applied to books being made into movies. i wasn't allowed to see movies until i'd read the book, and i apply the same rule to Squire Tuck's movie viewing. this ruined a lot of movies for me, because i had pictured the book in my mind perfectly and the director didn't always do right by my imagination. however, it did wonders for my critical thinking skills, deciding which things in a book were subject to interpretation, how far artistic license could reasonably extend, whether it's possible that i misunderstood the book and the screenwriter had understood it better, etc. Squire Tuck is following right along behind me and when he had a ten minute rant about the "scorning of the shire" i nearly ate my heart. so although we go about it in one direction ("you must read the book if you want to see the movie"), while i think many people tend to see the movie and then decide whether to read the book, i will concede that sometimes books into movies, and i mean great books into movies, can lead children to great books. lots of children read "charlotte's web" for the first time this winter (because of the movie), and while part of me feels like --how can they have not already read it and loved it?-- on the other hand, if it takes sending piles of cash to hollywood in order to get people sucked into "where's papa going with that ax?" then i'll accept it. some people need a cookbook to cook, they need to be inspired to do what might come naturally to other people. they need to see a picture of the finished product before they can imagine if they would like it for themselves. and as long as they accept that their version might come out differently, and as long as they're inspired to keep trying instead of throwing up their hands and dashing down to the drive-through... i guess i'm okay with that. i guess i can take off my judge's robes and sit down with the rest of the people at that table.

that said, if there is a hint of romance between jess and leslie; if janice is made to seem more worthy of mockery than pity ... i mean, i can handle the emo-girl sock arm thingies, but if they have changed the ending of this to make it one whit less painful and beautiful, i will go and punch david paterson repeatedly in the face.

a clean, well-lighted brain

Squire Tuck and i have been talking about brains lately. this is because he drew a probe that he would like to design that would help him to access and understand the brains of others. half of this probe is very grid-like, the other half is all squiggledy. i imagine that you will be, as i was, interested to learn that the grid portion of the probe is for decoding the emotions of others, and the squiggle part is for thoughts. because thoughts come in different sizes and shapes, you see, whereas emotions have a limited number of causes and expressions and always make sense.

the number of times that i can say "ah" in a day continues to amaze me. i'm clocking "ah" at the speed formerly observed for the expressionless "yeah" on the west wing.

so i asked Squire Tuck to draw me the inside of his brain, which he did, and it was really interesting because my picture of the inside of my brain is radically different. whole people can get in and out of my brain, they can poke about and learn things, tell me about themselves all day long, settle into the armchair that's just behind my forehead and see things from my point of view, should they choose to do so. people can wander in unannounced and set up their own little cozy area, decide to stay for a while, and i play really loud music and ask them to leave but they're like, gripping tightly to a dendrite and they shall not be moved. my skull is basically like a bucky fuller house, it's my house and it's where i live and all my thoughts have their own rooms, and that's how it is.

it is consistently strange to me to realize that i have a completely different concept of something than someone else has; that my concept is based on absolutely nothing other than my imagination and possibly some vaguely remembered sci-fi films; that this concept is no more or less valid than anyone else's. that there may be nobody wandering around inside my brain except me, or that in fact wandering does not take place at all.

Squire Tuck has a high and impenetrable wall at the edge of his brain, by the way. i should have gotten one of those, but i seem to have these rather permeable walls and they're right at the property line. so. come on in. i will make you some coffee and i have these delicious dark-chocolate-covered gingerbread things, they're taking up an awful lot of space in here right now and i'm happy to share.

*edited to add a requested link to a picture of the probe. the brain pictures are private, but Squire Tuck okay'ed the picture of the probe.

metaphor with line breaks

she says
every day you promise me dinner
she says
every day you say it's about what i want
she says
every day you make steak.
i'm vegetarian.

he says
i don't mean you have to make it
i don't mean i have to make it
i don't care if we make it together
but i have to eat.

he says
she used to like to cook
i thought she liked to cook
she would say i love to watch you eat
there would be little garnishes on the plate
now there's nothing.

she says,
he never told me when he was hungry
he never told me the food was good
he never said thank you
i stopped cooking.
he can get his own food, i don't care.
i'm too tired to cook, she says, or worse:
i'm not hungry.

he stops at a subway on the way home
or mcdonald's, and it's not on the way home at all
out of the way and he hopes nobody sees his car
something quick, something to tide him over
and he comes home to responsibilities and anger
no dinner
and they sleep clutching the edges of the bed.

eventually he starts working late
ordering in or going out
and it's not just for sustenence,
like he said it would be because he needed it
but one day he realizes he's savoring the food
the textures, the colors, the smell
the way it makes him feel

she goes out with her friend
and starts talking about the meals he used to make for her
the effort he used to make,
the textures, the colors
her friend touches her hand, briefly, only
briefly, "i could cook that, i think."
and she's hungry again, for the first time
in years.

tutor to two-two tuckova, part two

hey guess what i went to on tuesday night? an AWESOME parent teacher conference. who knew, right?

Friar Tuck couldn't go so i stood in the little line outside the classroom reading my new margaret atwood book (love!) and pretending not to listen to the woman who likes to complain about how much she hates the teacher, how much she hates the school, how her precious boy has never done anything wrong and she has had it up to here and blah. this woman is very good for me because she makes me feel a glimmer of something like sympathy for the teacher.

not that i haven't expressed hatred for the teacher, because i have. but i don't think Squire Tuck is pure and i don't think we're without blame in the problems he has. and i haven't stood out in the hallway in front of her classroom unleashing a non-stop tirade against her door. i've dumped my tirade here so that i could go into the meetings with my hands free, ready for whatever kind of working together could be accomplished.

anyway, so the teacher (she doesn't know Squire Tuck has a tutor, shhh) says that she's seen a vast, marked improvement in his attitude and in his schoolwork since the last meeting. she's very pleased. she's delighted. she's amazed. it's true that she has also sort of half-heartedly started alerting us to upcoming tests, for which the tutor has been thus able to help Squire Tuck study. i gave her a lot of credit for that, because it has helped a lot to know wtf is going on in school.

this is what i have so far, this series of revelations: 1) this teacher cannot teach Squire Tuck what he needs to know for school (acknowledged 11/2005); 2) i cannot teach Squire Tuck what he needs to know for school (acknowledged approx. 4/2006); 3) Friar Tuck cannot teach Squire Tuck what he needs to know for school (acknowledged 11/2006); however (formally recognized 1/2007) apparently SOMEBODY can teach Squire Tuck, and (like always) when you stop banging your head against the wall and try the door handle, it's like ahhhhhhhff cooourssse!

should've gotten a tutor ages ago.

then i went down the hall to talk to the german teachers who are beside themselves with frustration over how Squire Tuck CAN and yet WON'T. haha, ladies, welcome to my world. "but he's so smart... he's so! smart! he could do anything! he just won't try!" so they were kind of wet hennish. fortunately i was feeling charming and also very favorable towards them because of the fabulous trip to vienna last month, in which Squire Tuck realized that english was Not Enough and that german could be Useful, which is when he started admitting that he had homework. so by the end of it there we all were in the german teacher's lounge shaking our heads and laughing and vowing to work together and holy smokes, y'all. that was probably the first parent/teacher conference at which i neither pressed half-moons of blood from my palms nor cried on the way home nor any of the other things that i was coming to think were like, as much a part of the conference as olives are part of martinis.

i gave the tutor a raise today, btw. he best not get another job while we're gone in february.

disarming

i am thinking so hard these last few days that my head actually hurts. look! i will spare you all that with instead a lovely little slice of life story.

yesterday i asked Squire Tuck to do a few things and he agreed; in fact we stopped just shy of spitting in our hands before shaking on it, so heartily did we agree and discuss the rewards and penalties for sticking with the agreement vs. not (respectively). about five minutes after i left the room he told Friar Tuck he was done (uhm, no) and the two of them went to the store.

i was in my lowercase rage by the time they came back, that is to say not a full towering inferno of rage, which i reserve for catching someone in a direct and hurtful-to-me lie, but up there. i know that Squire Tuck felt that what i wanted him to do was not necessary (the list included things like "brush his teeth") and i know that Friar Tuck thinks that since the consequences are on Squire Tuck (dental care being covered, it is Squire Tuck who will suffer from bad dental hygiene) then it's up to Squire Tuck to get stuff done. but. but. but. so they came home and i was all grumbledy grumble grr. and Squire Tuck put his hands on the sides of my face and looked me full in the eye and said, i know you are angry, but i really really think i did what i really have to do, and it's me who takes the punishment if i'm wrong, so you really shouldn't be mad at me when i'm trying to take my own responsibility." then gave me a full hug for about a minute.

and he goes, "now i know that was kind of manipulative in a way because i know it's hard for you to be mad after i give you a hug. but in another way, it made you feel better, right, so is it still manipulative?"

choo.

it is apparently That Time of the Year. this happens to me periodically: i feel like i am daily confronted with such a number of things where rational behavior and logical decisions are so obvious to me and yet so obviously unemployed that i think, "either these people are crazy or i am."

for one month i will persist in thinking it's them. next month, expect me to come to the realization that it is, in fact, me who is crazy. then i will go into agonies over what this means. then i'll remember that i don't care; it will involve no doubt a slight rearrangment of habit and friends until i get it back to where i am on a schedule where yes i am crazy but it doesn't really matter, and we'll all be back to normal.

it's odd how you can see blinding glare, know that it is not the light at the end of the tunnel but an oncoming train of painful insight, and nevertheless find yourself totally powerless to move. you say to yourself, "self: remember how last time that train smacked you right in the head and you didn't have the sense to get out of the way?" and the self answers, "yeah, that sucked!" and then: WHACK.

sometimes a kiss is a thimble

we watched "peter pan" (2003) the other night. i understand the difficulty of adapting fiction into film but i am disappointed anyway. why do people always want to take a story that is perfectly lovely and simple and clear and add to it? that things must be subtracted i understand ("princess bride") but that things get added, especially things that change (what i perceive to be) the basic mores of the story ("charlie and the chocolate factory") is something i'll never get.

every love song on the radio is about your love. every biography is essentially your story. every experience speaks to your experience and every horoscope describes you perfectly. you take the specifics of a story and smudge them away until there are nothing left but basic values, then you take the ones that you approve and clasp them to yourself, wanting to see how perfectly they fit. see how this song uses the words "i love you"; that's exactly how you feel. she struggled against adversity and so did you; so you're the same. if i've traveled there then i know what it's like and you don't have to try to explain, and you are generous and stubborn and today will be lucky.

the thing is that the more you push and pull and shove things around until they look like something that you understand, the less they are something you really understand. the less they are something you can understand, i think.

i never really liked william carlos williams, i never understood the beauty of a red wheelbarrow and though so sweet and so cold has moved into my heart it's a very small space compared to a tedious argument of insidious intent. i like a little ambiguity. and i like cover versions, i like reinterpretations, i like personal footnotes in impersonal essays. so i'm not saying i require the thing itself or nothing; i'm not saying my feelings don't come with a soundtrack and a slideshow, because they totally do. but to work there has to be a response, not just an edit and addition and then a flat presentation.

i'm straying; i'm sorry. where was i going? what i wanted to say is that is that i see you taking pictures, songs, words, and adapting them to the story you want to tell me, but in a way that takes away from the original intent without actually adding anything to what you want to say. robin hitchcock sang you're projecting onto me/what you'd like yourself to see but this is even worse, a step further: you're projecting onto me what somebody else saw somewhere else. i am disturbed, i am increasingly disturbed, i am disturbed to the point where i don't know if we are even having the same conversation anymore. i need you to talk to me in your words, not exclusively quotation. i need you to look at me and see me, not a jumble of presupposition. i need you to listen to me, not to the voices i remind you of. and i need you to hear what i say, not what you thought my words should be.