tuckova

I almost believe that they're real

Going through a massive project of reorganizing all our photos, moving them from photo albums to boxes with little index cards. Nobody goes through these anymore, nobody is that interested in what I was doing 20 years ago that it needs to be in a bulky album taking up massive space. Yet I can't quite throw them out, and there's something about organizing things that makes it okay to keep them. And so here I am, writing in careful ink "Kokura, spring 1990, salarymen playing baseball outside the castle" even while I realize that if I haven't forgotten it yet I probably won't forget it ever; who are these notes for? And yet and yet.

Looking at these I realize I've always been the same, I'm like a tree, you can just read my rings and tell which years were sad and which were happy but in every picture I'm pretty much the same tree, hair longer or shorter, face wider or thinner, in a black tank top and jeans that don't look good at all, or in someone else's t-shirt and baggy pants rolled or cut to my knees, barefoot or boots. My insistence on lace-up shoes despite 20 years in cultures that make me take them off is a little odd, as is the fact that I only started wearing interesting socks about five years ago. My persistent dressing like an overweight stagehand even when I was slammin', and black has never looked good on me, though I feel good in it. The refusal to wear makeup even though everyone told me I would be pretty, because I knew I would not be pretty and I might as well spare myself the effort and the disappointment. I wanted to be menopausal when I was 18, I wanted to be excused from caring fairly early on and it shows, it shows, making faces to break the camera, see I'm not ugly it's just my face. 

And the pictures of other people, whoa. How to label this, to say "here's a person I thought I'd know forever, and now he's dead, or alive but we don't even talk; here's a woman I loved like a sister and now I can barely remember her last name." What it means to look and see how clear it is that I haven't changed, and so why have so many people disappeared, living only in these pictures? Did they change? I suppose people do. Or they get bored with my being the same, the way you can get tired of even your favorite picture if you have to look at it every day.

It is of interest now to watch people my age, women who were especially pretty in particular, but also the men, the sweetly balding men, watching with horror as their youth drains away but for me it is the same relief as a uniform: finally I don't have to decide. Or rather I seem to have decided finally already 30 years ago and now here I am. I could buy alcohol without getting carded from about age 15, which is possibly why alcohol was not particularly alluring for me. And now here I am, not merely the mother in the school play because I look older than everybody else, but the mother in real life and I may still look older than everybody else or maybe I finally look my age, I don't know. I recognize myself in these pictures but not because I haven't aged. The tree gets taller, and it's stronger or it's bowed but it's the same tree. Can you see what I mean? Do you want to see the pictures?

with mosquito nets for the shooting stars

A bed is so good for so many things. To slide between cool cotton sheets on a summer's night. On a winter night, it is pure comfort to get into a bed that is already warm. It is cozy to make a nest of several blankets layered on each other - the fuzzy one that reminds you of childhood slumber parties. The quilt your aunt made. Or it is nice to have a thick warm comforter stuffed inside a soft flannel cover, all that warmth in one sweet weight. It is lovely to have a selection of pillows - the big one for sitting up, the small one for tucking under one ear when you curl catlike around yourself. A big one for pretending. How absolutely luxurious it is to spend almost a third of the day with things that you picked, all the softness and color of your wishes. It is healthy to keep the bed only for sleeping, but it is also, oh such a treat to pull in a thick book, under a light that is just for you, and read until the words slide into your dream and the weight of the book falling across your legs wakes you, and the light is a reach away and you slide down under the covers, the transition from pleasure to pleasure almost seamless. It is a blessing to have a bed of one's own, to wake startled from a dream and feel immediately safe, to say, "Oh, here I am" and know where that is. And while it is delicious to wake with a heavy arm across you, long fingers spread across your stomach, the heat of love, it is also fine to wake for the sunrise, the light filling the room and the whole day in front of you and a good night's sleep behind you. But first you need to get a bed.

serendipity-dooda

Yesterday I had 200 Kc credit mysteriously added to my phone. One of my numerous fans, I assumed. About an hour later a stranger called to say she'd made a mistake and could I send the credit back to her? She seemed not entirely convinced I would do it. In the store, the clerk forgot to charge me for the credit and I almost walked out before I realized and went back, giving her the 200 Kc. I can only hope that sooner or later someone will succeed in just handing me 200 Kc because I'm awesome, and not because they're confused. It does seem like the karma wants me to have it.

Yesterday evening's pub quiz (where I went despite sort of knowing it was a bad idea, healthwise) was fun. And yes, we won again, duh. It helps to have savants on the team, is my thought. I mean, knowing the band Boy George played for is child's play, and the twin ship of the Mauretania is fairly easy, but to identify a few bars of Neil Young's Heart of Gold played backwards takes a certain kind of brain. It does not help to have me being sick, because everything irritates the heck out of me, from other players to factual mistakes in the questions, and it's hard for me to remember that it is my problem, and not that the world conspires to annoy me. Anyway, winning team gets half off on drinks. I stuck to hot whiskey with lemon for the throat, which probably kept things from getting worse.

Last night I dreamed someone was yelling at me and it was awful; trapped in a house with less space to maneuver than an airplane and being shouted at to get out of the way. I wished to be smaller than a dormouse but even that would have been in the way. When I tried to speak, I found had no voice at all, and when I woke that was true, and my general malaise had escalated into a fever.  

Drifting in and out of fever dreams all day today, then. I fell asleep in a sunbeam today and woke up an hour later, disoriented, in a different sunbeam. Read some Gertrude Stein because it fit and drifted again, dreaming of circles. The next time I woke up, the little old couple across the street had assumed their afternoon stations at the window, watching the traffic pass, pedestrian and other. Can they see me through the window, resting in these dusty shafts of light, and if so do they think I am lazy or ill? Perhaps both.

Squire is at the store. Today he will learn to make chicken soup because both my previous chicken soup makers are gone and I need a back up plan. It might be better to teach him to make hot and sour soup, which I think is what might actually cure me, but we'll start with the basics so he can take care of people besides me. Generously expanding the resume. I'm thoughtful, even when my head is on fire.

 

My Summer Vacation

Well, helLO there, soldier. Buy me a drink and I will tell you all about my summer vacation. Or anyway that's been my last week, minus the soldier part. Lots of drinks, lots of recaps, lots of how you doing no how you doing. And in the midst of this return there was a Rocky Horror party, and that was fun. And now I'm home, settled, checked in with my people, getting ready to get back to the business of, you know, life.

The summer was... well. Squire and I flew to California with his friend; Squire and Friend went to Grandparents, where it was believed to be more fun (and probably was: at Grandpa's they made bows and arrows and Grandma took them to a bunch of 3D movies; I wanted them to get up close and personal with the black widows in my sister's backyard while we cleaned it out, so). For three weeks the kids bounced back and forth between the lap of luxury and the school of hard knocks (though we also took them to Six Flags and stuffed them with hamburgers, so it wasn't all bad), and then Friend finally bounced back to the Czech Republic, where his parents that he basically hadn't bathed for three weeks and were quietly horrified. What? You try arguing hygiene with a teenager and tell me how it goes. We had a lot of visitors, which I enjoyed tremendously. Look, I flew eleventy thousand kilometers, and you can make me feel like a Special Guest Star by traveling a mere hour (and if you travel further? Then I am really really really happy). This is true. 

I did think a lot about how television shows work, and how normally it is My Show, the Anne In Brno Show, which is like a sit-dram, but this summer was totally sweeps week on other people's shows. I brought in viewership like whoa. I will so be getting an Emmy. Because you like me, you really like me.

I will NOT be collecting any awards for the Rocky Horror party (although I did absolutely win a costume contest, a hundred years ago, at a convention). Oh, my misspent youth. Remember when my editorial pointy-headedness was applied towards correctly quoting the movies I'd seen a hundred times? We had fun, though, throwing rice and confetti around the classroom with wild abandon, and then sweeping it up immediately afterwards like the good little adults we are now. Cards for sorrow+ water gun rain+ great scott toilet paper is kind of sticky, for future reference.

So now I'm home. Following the massive Summer Furniture Rearrangement of 2011, I felt pretty inspired to Change My Life, too. So I came home and got over the jet lag instantly (the trick: take short naps even if you can't sleep or if you want to sleep more, the whole day and the night before you travel; by the time you get where you're going you won't know which end is up, and you will sleep all night the first night = instant cure), so my body got a cold instead to make sure I was sufficiently miserable. I think I might have preferred the jet lag? Hard to say. Anyway. Got home, started working again, and in breaks dismantled my bed and made it into a new desk/office area. I kind of rock, with the hardware and stuff. It's a nice office. Maybe I'll take a picture.

Anyway, that was my summer. Photos are up here. I hope your summer was splendid too.