willllllllllllllllllllllllllma!

The wind blew and the rain fell and the wind blew some more but we weathered Wilma just fine.

This morning we went out to the beach which was breathtaking. The wind was still about 50 mph and the gusts sent the sand flying in such sudden sharp whooshes that it stung our faces and arms and legs. It was low tide anyway, but the winds associated with the hurricane had pulled the tide out farther than I have ever seen it. I walked on wet sand that has not been exposed to air in years, probably. The tide was out past the buoys that are meant to mark the end of the “safe zone” for swimmers. The buoys look odd stranded in the wet sand, like fish abandoned by a sudden swell.

The unusually low tide spared fish, we saw none on the sand but we encountered many beds of sand dollars that were quickly drying since they were exposed to the wind and so far from the water. We scooped hundreds up and carried them out to the water. The tide started to come back in but it did not seem to be coming back in fast enough to save the gasping baby sand dollars, some no larger than a nickel. We felt good about the sand dollar rescue, futile as it may seem.

Got home to find the power had gone out. It just came back on (obviously) but wow, did I accomplish a lot in six hours of no electricity:

--Cleaned off my desk and reorganized my bulletin board.
--Composed my “to do” list for the week.
--Wrote a couple of real letters and placed them in the mailbox.
--Walked the dog.
--Dusted the entire house.
--Put three weeks of laundry away.

--Cleared off the bench next to the front door and actually put everything away in its proper place.
--Tried to see if I could make myself look like an Asian girl using every bit of eye make-up I own.
--Decided I will always be the whitest white girl on the plant, which is how my friend Latoya describes me.
--Washed my face after the Guy In The Boxers asked me how I got the black eye.

--Called my mom every hour to announce that I still have no power, hoping for a dinner invitation.
--Gave up when she said “I guess you guys will be eating out tonight, huh? Oh, by the way, Dad and I are leaving for Disney tomorrow. We’ll be back at the end of the week.”
--Thought about how smug my parents are about retirement and disposable income even though they worked hard and earned it.
--Felt like a disgustingly spoiled Boomer.
--Drank three warm diet cokes.
--Walked the dog again.
--Called my brother to tell him Mom and Dad are leaving us no money at all.

waiting for wilma

The cars are gassed up and we have enough beer. Now we sit and watch and wait.

Some more.

Aw, screw it, I'm taking the dog for a walk on the beach.

oy

Tonight I ate cold ravioli out of a can for dinner while standing in front of a monitor and editing copy like a rabid one-armed kangaroo. I had not eaten since 6:00 a.m. and it was pretty good, considering. But whatever it takes to get the job done. When I finally walked to my car at 7:45 p.m. I realized I still had to pee and that I had needed to pee since around noon. I think I am turning into a guy.

jump

When I was a little girl my dad strapped some gear on me and tossed me off the platform of what was known as the kiddy jump tower at Fort Bragg. He did this without the prior consent or knowledge of my mom who knew nothing about it until I came home one Saturday afternoon with a certificate that announced I had officially graduated from "Kiddy Jump School."

I think Dad is still doing time for that one, but Mom has finally stopped shuddering and glaring at him whenever he mentions it.

For me, it was an exhilarating experience, one that set off the fuse of thrill addiction that has run through my life, fueling the jumps off the roof into the swimming pool, leaping from the railing of the nearby causeway bridge into the warm gulf of Mexico with all the wild boys in high school and taking a repelling class with my brother in the German alps. Our teachers were Army Rangers and they were a little nuts. It was wonderful.

Because we (my older brother and I) grew up in the bosom of a military family, and by that, I mean all my dad's colleagues and friends, there was an aura of danger that ran through my childhood, kind of like a foreboding soundtrack playing faintly in another room somewhere. Dad was a paratrooper, a Ranger, and all his friends were strapping, gorgeous muscled men with crew cuts who sat around our various carports at successive posts in Georgia, North Carolina, Kansas and Kentucky, smoking cigars and one-upping each other with macho stories. They filled my red wagon with ice and bottles of beer and lounged in the evenings.

Many of them are dead now, several lost in Vietnam and my dad has not recovered from losing them. I know now that he never will. He carries them around with him and they are never far from his thoughts. I can see it in his expression when something wonderful happens. I see bitter nodding knowledgement of the exquisite delightfulness of life. But there is sadness and regret and yes, guilt, that he was granted long life when better men than he (his words) were cheated.

Dad is coming up on a milestone birthday and my brother and I have decided to take him skydiving. But Mom has forbidden us from doing this. When she heard our plans, she folded her tiny arms across her chest and said "Absolutely not, no way."

Turns out she is not concerned so much about Dad completing the job on destroying his knees, but she is certain the three of us will die and she refuses to see us all plummet to our demises all at once. She apparently prefers we go one at a time. And my significant other (a courageous soul but a huge chicken when it comes to anything higher than a step-stool) also forbade me.

So we are on for next month some time. Dad can't wait and neither can I and my brother is giggling with anticipation whenever we discuss it. Hoo-rah.

tick-tock

My adorable aunt and uncle are moving from Michigan to Ocala soon. It will be a huge change for them. Their house is so far north that it stays light there in the summer until 10:00 p.m. It starts snowing in November and does not stop until after Easter some years.

But they live on top of a hill that overlooks a lake and I love to go visit. I walk for hours in the woods and stare at the deer I run into and examine the moss and the rotting fallen trees and inhale the aromas of the forest. At sunset the sun melts into the lake and everything glows amber and ocher and the brilliance creeps across the hillside, igniting all the ancient trees.

Night is so dark that the sky literally lights up and vibrates with stars--the most spectacular stars I have ever seen in my life. And if you sit outside for five minutes you are guaranteed to see a falling star streak across the darkness. No exceptions. I love to sit on the deck at night and just listen. I will miss the retreat it has offered me all these years. I know this has been a painful decision for them. Aunt Sue refers to the new house as their "final home."

I am happy that they are moving down because I don't think Uncle Paul can take another winter watching Aunt Sue shovel snow because his heart condition will not allow it. He is a terminally chivalrous man and the sight of his beloved slogging through the snow with a shovel in her petite hands is more than he can stand.

Aunt Sue called me last night and asked me what I want from their house. We have already done this once--when they sold their home in Ohio and moved full-time to their summer retreat in Michigan. I sighed and told her she has a new house waiting in Florida that will easily accommodate all her treasures so stop trying to give them away. I could hear their multitude of clocks ticking in the background as she paused. Uncle Paul is a clock nut and I suppose I have inherited this affliction. My house is likewise alive with the unique pulses of the many clocks that live here.

My latest addition is the grandfather clock given to me by my friend Mary's sister. Mary passed away unexpectedly in June and had no close relatives other than her sister who is in her 70s. Neither of them had children and the only family they have are very distant and estranged. There had been a battle over another relative's estate years ago that culminated in a lengthy and bitter lawsuit. So the only specifics in Mary's will were a detailed list of people who were forbidden from ever inheriting any of her stuff. They were all related to her. She left everything to her sister, the theatre where she volunteered and some of her friends, mostly actors. This came as no surprise to me. Mary spent most of her life in the theatre and we were her family, the one she chose. Isn't the family you choose really your true family? I think so.

It has been my experience that people often go insane when deaths occur in the family. The scramble to claim stuff always seems nuts to me. It's as if we forget that we will be dust soon too and so what is the point of fighting over Grandma's serving platter, really? It's all so temporary, all of it.

So after Mary died, I got a phone call from her sister who lives in Orlando. Helen was very pragmatic about it all.

"Everything I already own will probably end up at Goodwill. I have a house full of furniture and I don't need anything from Mary's house, so before we have an estate sale, I was wondering if you want her grandfather clock? I think she would have wanted you to have it."

So I went to pick it up and I noticed it had a thick wire attached to the back of it. Helen explained that Mary had fashioned the wire and attached it when she lived in San Francisco in the 1960s and was concerned it would tip over in the event of an earthquake. I left the wire on the clock.

The clock stands in the corner of my dining room and so we are face-to-face whenever I venture out of the den which is where I spend most of my days writing, muttering, daydreaming.

The clock has a kind, warm face. Sometimes I feel it sigh when I open its door to lift the great weights and pull the chains to wind it once a week. The loud bonging and chiming drives everyone else in the house crazy, so at night I silence the Big Ben and the Westminster chimes.

But in the mornings after everyone has gone off to school and work, the clock and I have at it. I release the silencer chains and the clock ticks and tocks and chimes and bongs, making merry music all day long. When everyone returns home in the evening, the clock is silent but for its ticking, and we are co-conspirators. No one knows what we two did all day long and that's the way it should be. We keep each other from feeling lonely, and it accompanies me as I work or don't work, reminding me always of the time, and sometimes I can hear it whispering: "The day is slipping away. Oh, hurry, hurry!"

detaining Miss Daisy

Note to self:

Dog does not do well when left home alone in the evening.

Dog must be afraid of the dark (dog ate a large portion of the bottom of the couch last night while we were out). It looked like a crime scene from CSI when we walked in the door.

In lieu of visit from the dog-whisperer, dog must go back to crate-ville when home alone.

Still think she's cute as all get-out.

Whatever that means.

The Falling of the Leaves

Welcome to October.

I live in a tropical climate and the leaves do not change here, much to my sad dismay. I have lived here most of my life, yet I find myself a little surprised and disappointed each year when the leaves fail to alter in hue.

I know Autumn is nigh, because the paper towels at Publix have pumpkin and maple leaf patterns on them and the Halloween aisle at Target is rocking. But the seagulls scream and the wet-haired shoppers sport long t-shirts over their bathing suits and the fishermen dash in for bags of ice for their coolers. Another boring day in paradise.

But I know that the leaves are stirring and drifting in the breeze and beginning to change elsewhere, just like they have forever. I think of you walking in the leaves of your big back yard and I smile. And I think it is a good time for a little lament from my favorite, William Butler Yeats. Yes, the guy probably could have benefited from Prozac. But then we would not have been gifted with some of the loveliest poetry to come out of the 20th century, and that would have been sad too. Anyway, I miss you. Happy Fall.

The Falling of the Leaves
Autumn is over the long leaves that love us,
And over the mice in the barley sheaves;
Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us,
And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves.

The hour of the waning of love has beset us,
And weary and worn are our sad souls now;
Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us,
With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.
---William Butler Yeats

matt

I went steady with a boy the last two years of high school. We were each other’s first serious relationship, first love, first everything. He dumped me without explanation the weekend after the Super Bowl in our senior year. I have no idea why. And it doesn’t matter, because this installation of memory motel isn’t about him. It’s about the boy who came and got me after that. His name was Matt.

So I am going steady with Boyfriend and we smugly hang out with three other “married” couples for two solid years. All the girls sport their boyfriend’s class rings or little dorky diamond chips called “promise” rings and we all hang out at our table in the cafeteria during lunch and between classes and party together on the weekends. It’s all so ridiculous now, isn’t it? But at the time, it made sense.

Boyfriend played the trumpet and sat first chair in the band and also played in a pretty good stage band. He drove a bottle-green Triumph Spitfire convertible and every morning he picked me up for school.

Then one morning he didn’t show up. I called his house, no answer. I got my mom to drop me off at school on her way to work. There was Boyfriend’s car in the parking lot. But he wasn’t in his usual spot at our table in the cafeteria where everyone hung out before first period. I found him in his empty first period classroom. He was sitting alone, pensive, waiting. When I asked him why he hadn’t picked me up he was silent and avoided eye contact. He was shunning me, kind of a teenage Amish strategy, I guess. It was pretty gutless. I was stunned.

I found out a few days later that he was running around with a girl who was a cashier at the supermarket where he had gotten an after-school job bagging groceries. The really shitty thing about it was that she lived one block away from me, so when I went to and from school, I would often see the Spitfire parked in her driveway.

I was miserable. And here I was, half my senior year to go and I had no one to go to the prom with or any of those other senior events. It was tragic. I coped by hacking off chunks of my hair in the bathroom, losing a lot of weight and sleeping all the time. Looking back on it, I think I was probably clinically depressed, but my parents thought taking me shopping a lot and sending me to visit my grandparents in Ft. Myers for the weekends would do the trick to cheer me up. I did learn to make Rob Roys and Manhattans and granddad did teach me to chip and putt (their house sat on the ninth hole of the Whisky Creek golf course), and I did come to appreciate the therapeutic value of golfing with a bunch of old guys, but I was still a mess.

One Friday night some of my girlfriends dragged me to a keg party out on the point. It was March and close to my birthday and they insisted I needed to be aired out and so I went. The keg parties always consisted of a bonfire on the beach (totally illegal then and now, I suppose) and a lot of car stereos booming and a keg in the back of someone’s pick-up truck and kids standing around in knots of boisterous conversation and idiotic adolescent behavior.

We all stood around and daintily sipped beer from big plastic cups and watched the guys do beer shots through a funnel attached to a hose. I remember standing in a circle with my girlfriends listening to them chatter about their dresses for the prom. I looked at the sky and mostly tuned them out, then I noticed all the chatter had stopped. When I looked around, I saw that our circle had been breached. There stood Matt and he was looking at me expectantly.

“So, are you ready to go?” He asked, conspiritorially, as if continuing an interrupted conversation.

I looked behind me, certain he wasn’t addressing me. I had never exchanged a word with this guy. But he took a step into the circle and held out his hand.

“Come on,” he said quietly.

I have no idea why I did it, but I took his hand and walked out of the circle to the astonishment of my girlfriends. They all gasped and sputtered protests, things like “What the hell?” “Are you high? What are you doing?!?” But I walked with Matt across the field and to his car and when he held the passenger door open for me I got in without hesitation.

Matt was our school’s melancholy, dark brooder. I suppose every school has one. Matt was really good at it. He had a mass of curly brown hair the color of cocoa powder and he had dark brown eyes. He was a big guy and very broad-shouldered. He played on the football team for three years but quit the team our senior year. He did not hang out with any guys but he dated a girl named Ginger for about a year. I had a class with her when I was in 11th grade and he would hang out with her outside the door until the last bell rang and I remember noticing him leaning into her, talking very quietly, murmuring. I never saw them touch but they always seemed so intimate that they didn’t need to touch. She was a year older than we were and after she graduated, I never saw Matt with anyone again.

Matt eyed me wordlessly then light up a cigarette. He reached down and picked up an eight-track tape off the floor of his Datsun and shoved the tape into the player attached to a rack under the dashboard. It was Bob Dylan singing “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” I’d never listened to Dylan before, but Matt listened to no one else at the time. We sat in the car for a few minutes, silently, he looking at me very studiously, as if he were trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I concentrated on the words: “Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?”

We drove out to the highway that runs along the beach and drove for about an hour in silence. I felt very comfortable with him and though I had no idea what he was up to, it didn’t matter to me. I trusted him in a way I had never trusted anyone before. And then he took me home. He knew where I lived which didn’t seem strange to me and I turned to him and said “thanks” as I got out of the car and that was it.

My girlfriends were beside themselves about this development and they demanded to know what had happened, what he wanted, where we had gone. I told them nothing. Even ex-Boyfriend became alarmed. He appeared next to my locker one morning and asked me what I was doing with Matt; did I even know what I was doing? I coldly told him it was none of his fucking business and walked away. What a thrill that was.

One night, a week after Matt rescued me from the keg party, he knocked on my bedroom window at 1:00 a.m. I opened it wide and popped the screen out and he crawled clumsily through and landed on my bed then flopped on the floor. He pulled a tape out of his pocket and asked me to play it. I stretched out on my bed and he sprawled on the floor and we listened to “Shelter from the Storm” from Blood on the Tracks:

'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
"Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Matt fell asleep on my floor and I woke him the next morning after my parents had left for church. We went out for breakfast and drank pots and pots of coffee while he scribbled notes in his notebook.

Matt and I became companions. It was the first adult relationship I ever had. We spent hours together not talking because there wasn’t a need to. We were comfortable being in the same room and there was no need for constant interaction. We spent a lot of time at his house, a beautiful home that he shared with his elegant, detached mom and his yellow lab, Sonny. He slowly told me about himself, things no one at school knew about him. Matt’s dad had been a pilot in the Air Force and he had been shot down in Vietnam. Matt’s mom never remarried. She spent a lot of time volunteering at the art museum in town and taking painting classes and wasn’t home very much. The house had a vacant feel to it and I know Matt liked my company for this reason. We never talked about Ginger, but I think she broke his heart somehow, though he did keep her picture on the bookshelf in his bedroom. I never asked and he never brought it up.

He was into the Beat poets, especially Ginsburg and he loved Woody Guthrie but he was on a Dylan bender at the time and so we listened to Dylan constantly.

I dropped out of everything at school and only attended enough classes to actually graduate. It was a huge relief, really, to be free of the social activities and all the traditional bullshit and the expectations that went along with it. I felt like all that was a million years behind me already. My parents were freaked out, but I was 18 and about to leave home anyway, so they threw their hands up and let me go.

On the morning of graduation, we woke up in the bottom bed of his bunk bed, Sonny draped across our feet, and realized the ceremony started in a half hour. We made it in time, but my parents were horrified and embarrassed (though my grandparents were intrigued and amused). My girlfriends glared hatefully at Matt and looked at me like I was mentally ill. It was the last time I ever saw most of them.

Matt’s mom rented a cottage on the beach for him for three months as a graduation gift. He and I skipped the prom and hung out at the cottage, drinking beer and eating crab legs and hush puppies. He had a huge round raft that he tied a concrete block to and most days that summer we would fill the raft with beer and drag it out into the water, drop anchor and drift and drink and smoke and sing and laugh for hours.

As fall approached and I prepared to leave for college, Matt grew quieter. I tried to tell him how grateful I was that he had seen through me and saw something more than a cheerleader, a stupid, spoiled superficial girl whose boyfriend had dumped her and made her a high school pariah, a self-absorbed drama queen. He had freed me and saved me all at the same time and I loved him for that. He didn’t want to talk about it.

He called me one night from a phone booth on the corner by the beach cottage. I could hear the rain hitting the glass partitions of the booth. He said he wanted to play a song for me and then he held the receiver to the tape player and I heard Dylan singing “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”

It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It don't matter, anyhow
An' it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If you don't know by now
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I'll be gone
You're the reason I'm trav'lin' on
Don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
That light I never knowed
An' it ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
I'm on the dark side of the road
Still I wish there was somethin' you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin' anyway
So don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal
Like you never did before
It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal
I can't hear you any more
I'm a-thinkin' and a-wond'rin' all the way down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I'm told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don't think twice, it's all right

I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I'm bound, I can't tell
But goodbye's too good a word, gal
So I'll just say fare thee well
I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don't mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don't think twice, it's all right

Then he hung up the phone. I listened to the dial tone for a while before I hung up. I never heard from him again.

we have to stop meeting like this...

most of the community theatres in my, er, for lack of a better word-- community--have in recent years tumbled down the slippery slope into embracing what is the most ill-advised of traditions in my opinion: allowing the audience to meet the actors in the lobby after the show.

Or maybe, I should say, subjecting the actors to having to submit to the glad-handing and mostly inane, tedious BS of the post-performance meet-and-greet.

One of the local theatres started this a few years ago when they did a show that drew a lot of families with kids, who, of course, clamored to meet the characters after the performance. Then it spread like a loathsome sickness through the other theatres in this area. Now regular local theatre-goers expect it and some even get snippy if actors fail to appear in the lobby after a show.

I do not go to the lobby after a show. I beat a fast retreat to the dressing room as soon as the curtain call ends and begin the process of becoming me again. I like drifting out of the stage door and walking to my car unnoticed, blending in with the folks in the parking lot. I have been directed by directors to troop to the lobby with the rest of the dutiful cast and be a good girl. It is the one direction I ignore. And that's okay, because in my book it is not a stage direction. If a friend or family member is in the house, they know where to find me. I don't believe I owe the audience anything beyond the performance they paid for.

My thespian friend, Bob, also hates what he calls the "'Joyed-It Line," this awkward reception line that forms with the actors lined up firing-squad style, smiling stiffly as the patrons shuffle by on their way to the parking lot, restroom or to the box office to turn in their hearing assistance head-sets. Some herd past the actors, ignoring them in their rush to get to their cars and out of the parking lot ahead of the crowd. Some do move down the line, shaking hands with the cast, mumbling, "'joyed it, 'joyed it, 'joyed it." It is as if we are there, hats in hand, asking for kudos and pats on the head and it is so pathetic. And it is agony. And sometimes downright humiliating.

Last night I filled in as lobby manager for a theatre that is producing a large musical. One of the women in the show is a relatively new performer, but quite talented and eager to please. And a damn good tap dancer, I hasten to add. But last night, some idiot, thinking herself, I suppose, to be witty in some ignorant, clueless way, commented to the performer in the 'joyed-it line, "my, you move well for a fat girl!" Well that was nice, wasn't it? I ended up rushing through the lobby to the back of the theatre to comfort this sweet young woman, who sang and danced her heart out for two hours on center stage but was now huddled in the darkness of the backstage bathroom, sobbing. What the hell is wrong with people? And why do we put ourselves through this? I know it will take some doing to get this wounded spirit back onstage tonight. I know she will be ready when the curtain goes up. But still.

Beyond applause, I don't care for audience feedback. I give a shit not what they think of my costume, hairstyle or performance. I don't give a shit if I remind them of their daughter, cousin, ex-wife or sister. I don't care to hear that they saw the same show on Broadway, but this production was just as good. If they had a good time, great, I am glad. But there should not be contact between cast and audience. That line should not be crossed. It ends the magic that is theatre. It makes the imaginary and fanciful suddenly real. That is not what we pay our money and eagerly sit in the darkness for. I have never attended a professional theatrical performance anywhere that allowed me to greet the performers in the lobby after the show. There is a reason for that.

cranes

One final thing re: last week in New York and 9/11 and then I will climb down off the soapbox and shut up about it already:

the cranes are still around.

One the first anniversary of 9/11, Grace and I wandered around the city, agog at all the firefighters and law enforcement officers who had flooded into New York to mark the milestone. We moved through the crowds, notebooks in hand, interviewing and photographing these men who called one another "brother."

There was a pack of hale and hearty firemen from Daytona Beach who had ridden their Harleys to be there. There were police officers from Indiana, Seattle, Texas, Hawaii and all over the world, a convergence that was broad and sweeping and intimate and familial all at the same time.

But what got me in the gut, what finally loosed all the emotions I had clamped down for months and months were the cranes.

The morning of 9/11/2002, a group pf Japanese firefighters appeared in front of the makeshift shrine to the fallen firefighters that had been erected near Battery Park. Each of the men held long strands of brilliantly colored paper cranes. They stood silently for a bit and then they lit incense and knelt, and a hush vibrated through the crowd. The men chanted and prayed and then they were quiet. Grace and I inched closer to watch. After a time, one by one, each man rose and approached the shrine and tenderly spread the cranes across the marble steps, then bowed. Then the group silently melted back into the crowd.

The following year, I was sad to see that the shrine had been cleared. I have often wondered what became of all the momentos, photos, prayers, love letters, candles, flowers, helmuts, badges and patches left in agony, in grief, in remembrance. I wondered the most about all the cranes.

Last week I got my answer. St. Pauls has intalled a commemorative exhibit in the sancutary of the church. There are displays there that are representative of the tons of items that were left behind by mourners following 9/11.

As I walked through the sanctuary last week, I was flooded with memories and emotions, but it was the sight of the cranes at the end of the room that made me let go of my breath and pause. Affixed to the carefully displayed cranes is a plaque that reads in part that the peace cranes were made by schoolchildren and survivors of World War II, sent from Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan. The cranes symbolize peace and compassion and reconcilitation, the plaque said.

lunch with the dead at st. paul's

I'm not much of a church girl.

But I was when I was growing up. My mom was raised Presbyterian and my dad was Catholic so when they married in a civil ceremony in the 1950s, both their families freaked out. It was today's equivalent of a devout Muslim marrying a Pentecostal Christian. The two just could not have seemed further apart at the time, according to thinking of the day, at least among my relatives. The happy medium my parents struck was to raise my brother and I in the Episcopal church. My brother was an acolyte and I always sang in the choir. The parishioners at our church became an extended family and it was all comforting in its unchanging familiarity.

Later, when I became an adult and aware of the politics in the church I attended, I grew more uncomfortable and wary of the self-righteous and the smug smiles of the pious. When my favorite priest, a wonderful, warm and incredibly witty scholar of ancient texts was abruptly ousted from my parish because he was unmarried and rumored to be gay, I left the church in disgust, never to return.

But in the months following 9/11, I spent a great deal of time at the church pictured here. St. Paul's stands at the foot of what was once the Twin Towers. It stood witness to the rise of Manhattan around it, to the Revolutionary war, to slave trading, to the Civil War and the Great Depression. And on 9/11, its walls shook and its grounds were showered with debris and wreckage, but still, by some miracle, it stood as it has since 1766.

Many people have sought and found refuge at St. Paul's and I imagine many will for years hence, at least, I hope so. I know I have.

On the morning following the fourth anniversary of 9/11, a little over a week ago, I sat and ate my lunch in the graveyard. The headstones that mark some of the graves are perfectly smooth, names and dates washed away by centuries of rain and snow and pollution and time. They sigh and lean on one another. I wonder what the dead must think about all they have witnessed here in this tiny garden where time in a way has stood still. I wonder if they mind me eating my lunch here. I don' think that they do.

9/11/2005

the hardest part about the day for me was controlling my hostility toward the tourists.

I sat and watched load after load of eager tourists disgourged from double-decker tour buses, digital cameras in hand, jostling to get a good shot of the site of the World Trade Center.

They actually stand in front of the construction site, arms thrown around one another and grin for the camera. As if this were the fucking Grand Canyon. How can this be? Why is this a tourist destination for these sheep from Cincinnati and Orlando? I am appalled.

"But what about you?" A voice whispers in my head. "Why are you somehow the exception? Aren't you here for the same reason? You don't live here either, you're an outsider, a gawker."

I tell myself, no, I am here for other reasons. Not just to snap a few pictures then slink around the corner to Century 21 to do some discount shopping. Not to linger over the vendor's card tables of Twin Towers t-shirts and snowglobes. I come back every year to remember. Because I was part of the recovery effort. Because I was here when the fires were still burning and teddy bears were left on street corners with photos of the missing. Everyone really believed we were all in this together and we still thought someone could have possibly lived through it and was waiting to be found and so there was hope.

These days I'm not so sure of anything I was certain of four years ago

sunset in Queens

My flight to NYC on 9/10 was fast which was great because the plane was packed and of course the screaming baby karma kicked in yet again--right behind me like clockwork. And the poor kid screamed in my ear for two fun-filled hours.

My Walkman only cranks so high, so in between tracks of Dave Matthews, I did hear some ear-piercing whines, but it wasn't too bad. Although I did panic at one point when the batteries crapped out on me and I feverishly pawed through my backpack like a crazed pit bull unearthing a spare rib to find my camera and yank the batteries out of it and slap them into the Walkman. Yes, I am the only dork left who does not own an ipod.

I was at Grace's long enough to dump my stuff and make the mandatory call home to announce that I lived through the flight and cab ride. Then I dashed off to the subway because I had a rendevous with Tracy in Times Square. I watched the sunset as I waited for the 7 train. Here's what it looked like.

distant drums

I live about three miles from a high school but the water carries sound quite well at night and the past two Friday nights I have been able to hear the steady, muffled beat of the marching band’s bass drum. Football season has begun and I hear echoes of sounds that are faint and far away but I can make them out-- the thumping of the percussion section and the high shrill wave of hundreds of excited voices going up at once. Those sounds transport me.

My first real official date in high school was to the homecoming dance when I was in 10th grade. My date’s name was Dave, and he was a big, lumbering football player. Dave was like a tank on the football field and everyone’s hero, not because he was especially handsome but because he was charming and he had miles and miles of heart and it showed. He attacked the field like it was a matter of life or death and he protected his teammates like a madman. And he laughed all the time and smiled easily.

I didn’t know Dave very well and so when he asked me to the dance it totally took me by surprise. I had never been asked out before and that was mostly because I had an overly protective older brother who scared the shit out of most of the boys who even acted like they might be interested in me. My brother approved of Dave.

After that it became apparent to me that Dave really liked me. I was in the marching band and at the end of the games, as the players would trudge off the field toward the athletic building, the band would be coming off the track and though separated by a chain link fence, Dave would sometimes walk along next to me, swinging his helmet and shoulder pads, and ask me what I thought of the game. Sometimes he would park his car by the field on afternoons when the band practiced and he would watch.

Looking back on it, I can’t believe my mom let me go out with this guy. He was a year older, over six-feet tall, and drove a car. I was 15 and had never been on a date or alone with a boy. But it was homecoming and my brother liked him, so maybe she figured it was okay. And it was, but I was so self-conscious and nervous I became paralyzed by the unease I felt being alone in his car with him. I remember gripping the arm rest on the door like death because my hand shook from nerves and I didn’t want him to notice. Dave had sent me a mum corsage the size of a cabbage and it had a little gold football charm in the center of it. It nudged my chin whenever I looked down. Peter Frampton was playing on the radio.

The dance was at the Dolphin Resort out on the beach (it’s still standing) and the theme that year was “Stairway to Heaven.” Everyone had to climb a spiral staircase to get to the ballroom on the second floor and I remember all kinds of stars had been hung from the ceiling and some of the football players were leaning over the railing, hooting and hollering at everyone as they arrived. They greeted Dave with particular gusto which made me even more nervous. I was so relieved to see some of my friends there that night that I sort of attached myself to them and spent little time with Dave, which pissed him off, but I didn’t know this until many years later.

I dated Dave a few more times after that but I could never get totally comfortable with him. And he was a terrible kisser. When he left for college my senior year, we saw each other sometimes when he was home on breaks, but it was never serious, plus I had a steady boyfriend at that point.

Dave surprised everyone when he suddenly married a girl he met at college. I didn’t see him again for 20 years. One day I sat in the corner of a packed conference room, furiously taking notes at a huge local government planning meeting and heard a voice on the other side of the room that was unmistakable. I looked up and searched the room for the voice. He had a beard and a little less hair, but, yes, it was Dave! He looked at me and grinned, then continued with his presentation.

We hung around after the meeting and talked for what seemed like hours. He had been married for 20+ years, had two kids and finally blurted out that he was pretty much miserable. He nodded and smiled when I caught him up on the details of my life. We kept in touch. We chatted and e-mailed and had lunch here and there for a few years. He was always up on the latest info on people we went to high school with and he loved to call me up and tell me who was in town, whose mom had just died, who was throwing a party.

Then he called me up one day and told me he had moved out, he was getting divorced. I met him a few times for lunch and listened and nodded. It occurred to me that I was completely comfortable with him and loved spending time with him. There’s something about being with someone who knew you when you were a kid and still sees you in that same soft, hazy light of wistful memories that is so powerful and potent. I treasured my friendship with Dave. But I wasn’t available beyond that and he never crossed the line. It was understood.

I talked to Dave yesterday for the first time in about six months. He is getting married in November. He apologized about not being in touch lately and for not inviting me to the wedding, but his wife-to-be would not appreciate a former girlfriend at the ceremony, which I totally understand (though I never really considered myself his “girlfriend” and I never slept with him, ever). I’m happy for Dave. I congratulated him and wished him well and I meant it. As I hung up the phone, I thought: " I’ll probably never hear from him again and that’s okay, that’s life, I get it."

But tonight after I parked the car and walked up the driveway toward the house, there was that sound again, that faint distant pounding. The faded trill of a ref’s whistle cut through the night air and I stopped for a moment to listen. And a wave of sadness swept over me so sharp and complete, the feeling of loss so unexpected, so bitter, that it really kicked me in the ass.

...and that's all I have to say about that. (why I love Tim)

"Those Looters Should be Shot, Praise the Lord, and Pass the Guacamole!"
A God with Whom I am not Familiar
By TIM WISE

This is an open letter to the man sitting behind me at La Paz today, in Nashville, at lunchtime, with the Brooks Brothers shirt: You don't know me. But I know you. I watched you as you held hands with your tablemates at the restaurant where we both ate this afternoon. I listened as you prayed, and thanked God for the food you were about to eat, and for your own safety, several hundred miles away from the unfolding catastrophe in New Orleans.

You blessed your chimichanga in the name of Jesus Christ, and then proceeded to spend the better part of your meal--and mine, since I was too near your table to avoid hearing every word--morally scolding the people of that devastated city, heaping scorn on them for not heeding the warnings to leave before disaster struck. Then you attacked them--all of them, without distinction it seemed--for the behavior of a relative handful: those who have looted items like guns, or big screen TVs. I heard you ask, amid the din of your colleagues "Amens," why it was that instead of pitching in to help their fellow Americans, the people of New Orleans instead--again, all of them in your mind--chose to steal and shoot at relief helicopters.

I watched you wipe salsa from the corners of your mouth, as you nodded agreement to the statement of one of your friends, sitting to your right, her hair neatly coiffed, her makeup flawless, her jewelry sparkling. When you asked, rhetorically, why it was that people were so much more decent amid the tragedy of 9-11, as compared to the aftermath of Katrina, she had offered her response, but only after apologizing for what she admitted was going to sound harsh. "Well," Buffy explained. "It's probably because in New Orleans, it seems to be mostly poor people, and you know, they just don't have the same regard." She then added that police should shoot the looters, and should have done so from the beginning, so as to send a message to the rest that theft would not be tolerated. You, who had just thanked Jesus for your chips and guacamole, said you agreed. They should be shot. Praise the Lord. Your God is one with whom I am not familiar.

Two thoughts.

First, it is a very fortunate thing for you, and likely for me, that my two young children were with me as I sat there, choking back fish tacos and my own seething rage, listening to you pontificate about shit you know nothing about. Have you ever even been to New Orleans? And no, by that I don't mean the New Orleans of your company's sales conference. I don't mean Emeril's New Orleans, or the New Orleans of Uptown Mardi Gras parties. I mean the New Orleans that is buried as if it were Atlantis, in places like the lower 9th ward: 98 percent black, 40 percent poor, where bodies are floating down the street, flowing with the water as it seeks its own level. Have you met the people from that New Orleans? The New Orleans that is dying as I write this, and as you order another sweet tea? I didn't think so.

Your God--the one to whom you prayed today, and likely do before every meal, because this gesture proves what a good Christian you are--is one with whom I am not familiar. Your God is one who you sincerely believe gives a flying fuck about your lunch. Your God is one who you seem to believe watches over you and blesses you, and brings good tidings your way, while simultaneously letting thousands of people watch their homes be destroyed, and perhaps ten thousand or more die, many of them in the streets for lack of water or food.

Did you ever stop to think just what a rancid asshole such a God would have to be, such that he would take care of the likes of you, while letting babies die in their mother's arms, and old people in wheelchairs, at the foot of Canal Street? Your God is one with whom I am not familiar. But no, it isn't God who's the asshole here, Skip (or Brad, or Braxton, or whatever your name is). God doesn't feed you, and it isn't God that kept me from turning around and beating your lily white privileged ass today either. God has nothing to do with it. God doesn't care who wins the Super Bowl. God doesn't help anyone win an Academy Award. God didn't get you your last raise, or your SUV. And if God is even half as tired as I am of having to listen to self-righteous bastards like you blame the victims of this nightmare for their fate, then you had best eat slowly from this point forward.

Why didn't they evacuate like they were told? Are you serious? There are 100,000 people in that city without cars. Folks who are too poor to own their own vehicle, and who rely on public transportation every day. I know this might shock you. They don't have a Hummer2, or whatever gas-guzzling piece of crap you either already own or probably are saving up for. And no, they didn't just choose not to own a car because the buses are so gosh-darned efficient and great, as Rush Limbaugh implied yesterday, and as you likely heard, since you're the kind of person who hangs on the every word of such bloviating hacks as these.

Why did they loot? Are you serious? People are dying, in the streets, on live television. Fathers and mothers are watching their baby's eyes bulge in their skulls from dehydration, and you are begrudging them some Goddamned candy bars, diapers and water? If anything the poor of New Orleans have exercised restraint. Maybe you didn't know it, but the people of that city with whom you likely identify--the wealthy white folks of Uptown--were barely touched by this storm.

Yeah, I guess God was watching over them: protecting them, and rewarding them for their faith and superior morality. If the folks downtown who are waiting desperately for their government to send help--a government whose resources have been stretched thin by a war that I'm sure you support, because you love freedom and democracy--were half as crazed as you think, they'd march down St. Charles Avenue right now and burn every mansion in sight. That they aren't doing so suggests a decency and compassion for their fellow man and woman that sadly people like you lack. Can you even imagine what you would do in their place? Can you imagine what would happen if it were well-off white folks stranded like this without buses to get them out, without nourishment, without hope?

Putting aside the absurdity of the imagery--after all, such folks always have the means to seek safety, or the money to rebuild, or the political significance to ensure a much speedier response for their concerns--can you just imagine? Can you imagine what would happen if the pampered, overfed corporate class, which complains about taxes taking a third of their bloated incomes, had to sit in the hot sun for four, going on five days? Without a Margarita or hotel swimming pool to comfort them I mean? Oh, and please, I know. I'm stereotyping you. Imagine that. I've assumed, based only on your words, what kind of person you are, even though I suppose I could be wrong. How does that feel Biff? Hurt your feelings? So sorry.

But hey, at least my stereotypes of you aren't deadly. They won't effect your life one bit, unlike the ones you carry around with you and display within earshot of people like me, supposing that no one could possibly disagree. But I'm not wrong am I Chip? I know you. I see people like you all the time, in airports, in business suits, on their lunch breaks. People who will take advantage of any opportunity to ratify and reify their pre-existing prejudices towards the poor, towards black folks. You see the same three video loops of the same dozen or so looters on Fox News and you conclude that poor black people are crazy, immoral, criminal. You, or others quite a bit like you, are the ones posting messages on chat room boards, calling looters sub-human "vermin," "scum," or "cockroaches." I heard you use the word "animals" three times today: you and that woman across from you--what was her name? Skyler? What was it you said as you scooped the last bite of black beans and rice into your eager mouth? Like zoo animals? Yes, I think that was it.

Well, Chuck, it's a free country, and so you certainly have the right I suppose to continue lecturing the poor, in between checking your Blackberry and dropping the kids off at soccer practice. If you want to believe that the poor of New Orleans are immoral and greedy, and unworthy of support at a time like this--or somehow more in need of your scolding than whatever donation you might make to a relief fund--so be it. But let's leave God out of it, shall we? All of it. Your God is one with whom I am not familiar, and I'd prefer to keep it that way.

Tim Wise is the author of two new books: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005). He lived in New Orleans from 1986-1996 (AND I LOVE HIM).

dinner at the wharf

We went down to the wharf for dinner tonight. The smell of red tide wafted into the car all along the beach route, but once we got to the wharf, it was fine.

Chris, the bartender, has eyes the color of pumpkin and a wide, sunny smile. He shook everyone's hands and his fingers lingered in my palm as I pulled my hand away. He shot grins at me all evening, as if he knew something about me and I became convinced that he knew that I have secrets. And I do, of course. I've never met him before.

I sat at the driftwood bar, the sea breeze rustled the small pile of napkins in front of me as my eyes swept over the handles on the draft beer taps. I impulsively ordered a Killian's Red to wash down the seafood, though I have never ordered one before. I smiled as I ran my fingers along the frosted glass, thinking of someone I once knew who was fond of Killian's. The ale made me feel warm inside and every muscle in my body unclenched. I ordered a second one and when Chris set the glass in front of me, he leaned in and whispered intimately, "good girl." I looked around to see if anyone else had heard. No. They hadn't.

After we ate, we walked on the beach and watched the sun dip into the gulf. The breeze picked up and bunches of sandpipers blew in and ran back and forth, in and out of the tidewater. The season is changing. I can feel it in the air.

brush step shuffle step

so a group of us is taking a tap dancing class. The youngest is 12 and the oldest is in his 70s. We have one thing in common--we are all veteran actors, some professional, and a few of us are directors and theater technicians. Most of us never tap danced before but always harbored a secret longing to learn how to dance like Gregory Hines.

It started out as a lot of hot air, a bunch of my theater friends laughing it up over beers last year, talking about how we all need to get out of our comfort bubbles and become willing to make asses of ourselves. Serious actors, even amateurs, take themselves far too seriously. And we all agree that humiliation is growth-producing. So it began as idle talk. Then someone actually got on the phone and called every dance school in town (Miss Jeannie's, Miss Lynn's, Miss Judy's -- what the hell is up with all the "Miss" dance schools?) and finally found one that would take a bunch of mostly adult actors and techies on as beginning tappers.

One brave teacher volunteered to work with us--our teacher, Amy (in photo, giving David, a really accomplished director and blossoming hoofer, a few pointers). She has the patience of a saint and she seems so thrilled with our progress. And we have become something of a legend around the dance school. When our class gets rolling on Wed. nights, all the cute little ballerinas from the "real" dance classes gather around the observation windows and watch us tap our butts off. They all seemed more than a little stunned at first. Sometimes their moms watch too. They REALLY looked stunned. And some of my fellow-tappers are much older than some of the ballerina moms. Funny thing--two of the ballerina moms decided to join us this year when the fall class started up. We took a vote and decided to let them in our "special" class.

Tap has lightened me up a lot. I often find myself shuffle-stepping down the cereal aisle at the grocery store and mentally tapping rhythms whenever I hear a snappy tune. Floor surfaces fascinate me now. I cannot resist doing a time-step sometimes, even at the most inappropriate of times. I take note of potential tapping spots, long expanses of smooth flooring are very alluring now.

We just finished learning a great dance routine to "Steamed Heat." And when we strap on our tap shoes, we are all very hot, every one of us. I highly recommed tapping. If you last took a class in 1968, I am talking to you. If you always wanted to try it--what are you waiting for? Get out there and give it a try.

For those about to tap, we salute you.

unglued

I leave for New York this week and I am looking forward mostly to being alone.

I spent a week in NY in September of 2001. I flew home on the morning of Sept. 10th after having breakfast at the World Trade Center. On the way out, I paused at the mailbox on the corner and balanced a cup of take-out coffee in one hand, my elbow holding the mail slot open as I dropped some postcards into the mailbox. They bore silly messages to my girlfriends at work, joking that I knew full well that the postcards would arrive days after I was home.

And they did.

The postcards bearing images of the shimmering Twin Towers at sunset on the front and September 11th postmarks arrived about a week later. A few weeks after 9/11, one of my co-workers returned the postcard that I had mailed to her. She thought it was amazing that I had somehow cheated certain death by 24 hours. She thought I should have the postcard and keep it always, because she viewed it as a sort of talisman.

Every year since I have been in New York on September 11th. The first two years I was on assignment covering 9/11 stories. I am drawn there.

I will arrive at Grace's three days after she's taken off for San Diego and as much as I love her, the idea of coming into an empty apartment in Queens and dumping my bag in the hallway and not having to say hello to anyone or DO anything is one that I relish. I will be required to speak to no one I know, at least for a few days.

My friend Tracy will be in town and she wants to go to Greenwich for the day, so I'll meet her at Grand Central and we will take the train to Connecticut and shop and do lunch and other girlie things she so loves to do.

On 9/11 I will go to St. Patrick's for the 7:00 a.m. mass though I am not a practicing Catholic or a practicing anything. I will hang my press pass around my neck and trek to Ground Zero. I will take copious notes and try to avoid trite cliches.

But the rest of the time, I will remove my watch and stroll endlessly and wander and take the subway out to Coney Island and drink lots of coffee and spend one entire morning at the New York Public Library and just be.

reason #5

for not leaving the kids alone in the costume room with David after he has decided to come OUT!

new orleans

I was thrilled when my big brother left for college in 1977.

Two reasons: (1) I didn't have to share the bathroom with him anymore and (2) I could visit him as much as possible and during his freshman year at LSU, he lived in the athletic dorm. Oh my god, those jocks were a smorgasboard of hottie-ness!

So I spent many a foggy weekend in the late '70s and early '80s prowling the steaming sidewalks of the French Quarter with my bro and his sweaty friends.

Those were halcyon days, my friends.

God bless N.O. May she rise again.

f__k deadline

I have two pieces due at 5:00 p.m. but my friend needs me. I filed one a few minutes ago, but I think my ed. is going to have to wait. I'm dying for a cigarette and a huge cup of joe. But I will send my ed. a sweetly worded f__k-off e-mail, skip the duel chemical rush (I am only a once or twice a year closet smoker anyway) and head over to the hospital armed with chocolate, fuzzy slippers and the latest Oprah magazine. Because my friend needs me.

early a.m. phone calls

are never, ever good.

This morning's ominous 6:00 a.m. ringing of the phone brought the shitty, awful news that my friend lost her baby last night. She was five months along, just learned last week that it was a girl. We were all so happy for her. My heart is breaking for my friend.

lame-asses, morons and mediocrity everywhere

I got an e-mail today from one of the many editors I work with in response to an e-mail I had sent to said editor about a story I was working on.

Two months ago.

What the fuck? And it was so lame and nit-witty: "My, where does the time go? So sorry it took me a while to get back with you..."

A while?

I considered printing it and hanging it up for all the world to see, but I refrained and instead forwarded it to one of my like-minded indignant comrades with the usual rant: "What the fuck? I wonder how much ______ makes to take month-long vacations more than once a year and fly to New York and all over hell's half acre only to end up writing what amounts to seven inches of copy once a month or so???? " The rest of the time said editor sits and stares at the PC or goes out to lunch for three hours. And it just makes none of the usual sense. Said editor is not young, hot, or well-connected and cannot possibly be screwing anyone let alone anyone who could insulate said ed. Maybe ed. is in the witness protection program. Or maybe the senior eds. have forgotten ed. is still on staff and never told payroll. It's insane. What's worse is that it is standard.

Another editor wanders in at 10 a.m., works until, oh, around noon, leaves to go running or cycling, comes back, eats lunch, showers and changes, maybe pops in to an editorial meeting then leaves at 3 p.m. to pick up the kids at school. Never comes back. Until the next day at 10 a.m.-ish. We figure said ed. puts in about 10 real hours per week. Just got promoted, by the way. There are also a bunch of writers in the "very special story of the year club." That means they write one a year. Maybe.

Again, I say, what the fuck?

My employer pays more people shit-loads of money to sit on their asses and do nothing while the lowly staffers and correspondents/freelancers do the bulk of the writing. That's if there is still room after they run all the wire stories no one cares about.

I guess I sound shrill and bitter now.

My friend just left me a mumbling whispered voicemail something to the effect that committing murder in the newsroom might be a fun afternoon activity. Glad I am out of the workplace more often than I am in.

What the fuck indeed.

scraped by again

holy shit are we lucky here on the west coast of the east coast.

The wind is whipping, the seabirds are MIA and the sky is pretty weird, but we're out of the bullseye, so no complaints.

God help the folks in the Big Easy.

Mother Nature sure can be a bitch on wheels.




Mad Beach, August 27, 2005

why i love italian boys

There just isn't anything else to say, is there?

Okay-"yummy."

You're welcome, Trevor.

the gray area

My family has a huge wall of framed family photographs. It started eons ago with my grandparents' parents and now every one of us has such a wall in our homes. It's a requirement. But the one at my mom and dad's is by far the flagship.

The photos are all black and white shots in differing hues of sepia and ashy gray. Some photos are less than a year old and the oldest one was snapped in 1917. It's odd to look at the images scattered all over the wall knowing that everyone there was once alive and walking around and I knew and loved each of them.

My favorite is the one of my grandfather's company bowling team--they worked for the Dolly Madison pickle company (later bought out by Smuckers) and the photo was taken in 1939. All the men are strapping peasant fellows with wide smiles and funny haircuts. My grandfather is handsome, his hair is thick and he is wearing a necktie and suspenders--they all are--his sleeves are rolled up over his strong forearms and he is holding his bowling ball out in front of him as if offering it to the photographer.

Another is a professional headshot of my dad in his military uniform. He is young and gazing brilliantly off into the horizon, airborne wings above the lieutenant bars on his hat, cavalry patches on his collar, silk camouflage neck scarf. It was the year he went to Vietnam for the first time. We call it "the Colonel Kurtz" and whisper "the horror" whenever he pauses to look at himself, circa 1967.

There are pictures of my brother and me at varying stages of our lives; he stands in front of the wall sometimes and shakes his head. He jokingly calls it "the hall of shame." Sometimes my dad stands in front of it, Yul Brenner-ala the King of Siam-like, feet spread apart, hands on hips and proclaims proudly to my mom: "We are responsible for all of this," gesturing to the kids and grandkids smiling down at him.

When I was younger, my image all framed and mounted on the wall annoyed me and caused me embarrassment. But now I see that I blend well with the rest of them, in this sea of DNA and memory and tangled family bonds. And I don't mind so much.

aw, shit

here we go again, we're in the "cone of death." Time to power down, go get some beer and ice for the cooler, gas up the cars and hunker down for the looooong weekend. Wish you were here.

the lamp

This little inebriate is my most treasured family heirloom.

If my house were on fire, this is the one item I would run back in to save. The little ceramic drunk hanging off the lamppost graced the bar in my beloved grandfather's basement in Ohio for many, many years, played witness to family history, survived many moves and is the keeper of the flame that is my childhood's memory.

Bars were a big deal in my family and my grandpa's was spectacular. It was the centerpiece of all extended family activity and as the oldest of five siblings, grandpa was the patriarch of our clan and he hosted all family get-togethers. He took his role very seriously.

The bar was long and wooden and could accommodate eight adults on the big old antique stools. It even had a round brass runner to rest your feet on and a spittoon which held 100s of matchbooks from every restaurant and bar in Ohio, New York and points in between.

The bar was well-stocked; three mirrored shelves were jammed with shot glasses and glass bottles of every shape and size, each filled with mysterious liquid in varying hues of amber. It had a sink and a massive, rounded refrigerator that was always loaded with beer for the adults and grape Nehi and cream soda for the kids.

Grandpa had a huge collection of painted bar glasses that had things like riverboat scenes on them, and politically incorrect themes like the little black Sambo glasses and naked lady glasses. He also had 100s of swizzle sticks that I now own. There are sticks with naked lady bottoms bent over the tops ("Bottoms Up!") and big fish, glass olives, swizzle sticks with little hotels on top of them, exotic birds, the names of cocktail lounges and long since bulldozed lakeside retaurants and bars from Michigan to Ohio. They sit in a glass on the window sill in my kitchen now.

In the summers, all the men in the family would get together and play endless rounds of horseshoes in grandpa's yard. They would smoke and tell dirty jokes and laugh and swear and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon and bottled Miller High Life. My great uncle Bobby (grandpa's youngest brother) would always inadvertently hit one of his brothers with a horseshoe and there would be a lot of shouting and carrying on. He was a massive beefy man and he chewed cigars. He never lit them, just walked around all day with one clamped in his mouth. Uncle Bobby bore a startling resemblance to Babe Ruth and he had been a Golden Gloves boxing champion in the 1940s but his aim with a horsehoe was for shit.

All the women would wisely avoid the horsehoe games by gathering in the kitchen to cook and chat and swat the kids away.

My cousins and second cousins would all belly up to the bar, fighting each other over the bar stools. Grandpa would line up glass tumblers on the bar and shoot a little bit of seltzer water into each glass as we watched, riveted. Then he would drop colored tablets into each glass and ad more seltzer as we oohed and ahhed, watching the bubbling brew turn orange or purple or red. Those grape and orange fizzy sodas were the best I ever tasted.

At night we would run around catching fireflies while the adults lounged on redwood patio furniture in the cool evening air, the butts of their cigarettes glowing softly off and on like orange fireflies, dancing in the darkness as they talked and gestured.

After my grandparents moved to basementless-Florida in the 1970s, my Uncle Paul took most of the bar equipment and set up an equally impressive bar in his own basement where he held court for over 30 years. He sold his house and moved to Michigan five years ago and asked me to fly up and decide what I wanted from his house. He put everything I selected on a truck and had it shipped to my brother and me. I carried the lamp home on the plane.

The drunk is a sophisticated bit of 1940s engineering. One click turns his nose on. I don't turn it on often, because the red bulb is original to the lamp and I don't know how I would replace it, since a friend who is a theatrical lighting designer told me they don't make bulbs that size anymore. A second click turns the big "Bar" globe on. A third click lights both. Sometimes when I'm working late at night I turn the globe on and it's glow makes me happy.

Yesterday it rained and I stopped working early and took a nap. I dreamed that it was fall and we were all at Grandpa's house in Ohio and Uncle Bobby was getting the house ready for Halloween. He was taking all the light bulbs out of the lamps in Grandma's living room and replacing them with blacklights. I was playing hide and seek with my cousins and from my hiding place behind the sofa, I watched him snake his thick arm under a lamp shade and pull a light bulb out. He caught my eye and grinned, winked at me and held the lightbulb to his lips and whispered "Shhhhhh!!!" Then I woke up.

sand

I live near the beach so I have the obligatory bowls of seashells all over my house. And sand. I have sand in my house, in my car, in the corners of the bathtubs, in the bottom of the washing machine, under the couch cushions and in my bed.

I hear seagulls all day and the occasional deep echoing sound of freighter horns way out in the gulf of mexico and the dinging bell of the causeway drawbridge that warns it is opening or closing.

My favorite time to go to the beach is at sunset, preferably during the week--fewer people. In the summertime when I arrive to witness sunset, most of the fat tourists have dragged their little fat sunburned children and neon rafts and inner tubes off to be stuffed into rental cars and driven back to the Holiday Inn where they will shower and dress in tacky tropical wear they fancy makes them look Island-like. And they will then go stuff their faces at the Outback.

I have the beach mostly to myself at twilight, the gloaming, my favorite time of day when everything vibrates and glows and it's quiet but for the mesmerizing sound of the waves and the shrill squeaking of the seabirds. I wiggle my butt into the sand and make myself a bucket seat and scrunch my toes deep into the sand, past the light, white dry powder down into the dark, cold, wetness beneath. I watch the sun melt into the water and rhythmically sift with my toes. Usually I hum. Then I go home and fold laundry.

the boy on the bus

I drove across the bay to go see my sweet friend, Julian yesterday morning. He answered the door in house slippers and a Hawaiian caftan with a cigarette in his mouth and I knew the night before must have been rough. The final tip-off was the five-o'clock shadow on his head. He takes great pains to meticulously shave and shine up his beautiful, perfectly round bald black head and he looked like fuzzy shit.

"Baby, I have got a mother-fucker of a migraine, you want a beer?" he said, shuffling backwards and flinging his lighter onto the coffee table then flopping on the couch dramatically.

I scolded him for being all closed up in the dark house and smoking like a chimney and drinking beer at ten o'clock in the goddamn morning. Plus, he had a massive bunch of flowers for me to take to a fancy-schmancy event last night and the mixture of cigarette smoke and too many tropical flowers in a small space made me feel like barfing. So I had a beer too, bummed one of his Marlboro lights and curled up on the couch with him and listened to his tale of woe.

His lover, Stefan had just left to return to Amsterdam after a three week visit. Julian said it was a fucking miserable visit and he and Stefan are through.

"Do you know, I ccoked and cleaned and had that man here for three weeks and he never once took me out for dinner? He never opened his wallet for anything--not one time, then he had the audacity to bitch last night about all the money he spent coming over here when we were out having dinner with Shawn and Eddie," he huffed.

After all the gory detail, we layed there blowing smoke rings. Then Julian said he knew deep down it was over between them the last time he visited Stefan a few months ago, but he didn't want to face it. Now he wishes he had.

"There I was in Amsterdam, in AMSTERDAM, girl! I could have been fucking everything that walked. But no, no, I was trying to work it out. Anyway, one day I'm riding around on this bus doing some shopping and this beautiful man got on the bus. Well, we had eye contact, honey. And he very slowly slinked his way down the aisle (but not in a faggy way, very hot) and sat in the seat right behind me. After a few minutes I realized he was leaning forward and resting his arms across the back of my seat. Well, I turned around and his nose was touching mine--he was right here--(Julian held his hand up to his nose) I should have just grabbed him and kissed him, right there. I could tell he wanted me to. But I didn't."

I sighed and light another cigarette and then Julian said:

"He had black hair and the bluest eyes. I think about that boy every day. Every day."

i am a coffee whore

It's true, I am a whore for DD coffee. It owns me and I am its shameless slut. A writhing, sweating, panting, coffee craving wench.

I should probably be concerned but I'm not.

Even when I am on deadline and dangerously close to not filing on time, I cannot resist the lure, the siren call. I can smell the coffee beans, the steamy brew and I bolt.

Every day I get in my car and drive 10 miles round trip to buy my succulent DD coffee. I even threw out my coffee maker. I drink no home made brew. It has to be DD.

The cute boys who work the drive-thru window know my voice. I am like a crack head: "Hi you guys, I need me some brew." And it's there at the window, just like I like it. Cheesy white styrofoam -- large -- not "Grande." Please. No whipped topping or candy-ass chai. Just strong hot coffee. Oh, yeah, baby. My pulse is racing, I'm quivering as I guide the cup to my lips, ahhhhhhhhhh...

if loving it is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

small world

I sent my boss a link to a cool site this week and he sent one back to me that is beautifully written and charmingly witty. It's a blog written by a dog, and it occurred to me that the dog-blogger has the same name as my boss's dog. So I e-mailed him back and said "hey, wait a minute, is this your dog?" To which he replied: "yes."

So I said, "well, I have one too" ( a dog and a blog). He asked for the link but I declined. I like writing in anonymity. I like that the people I live with know nothing about it. No one I know does. If I knew my friends were reading, I would be guarded and I don't want to fucking edit myself every minute of my life. I need my own space, a room of one's own, as Virginia said.

Here is the funny part: we chose the same template and our writing styles are similar. Except that he is writing as a dog and I am writing as myself: a bitch.

things I do not give a shit about

...Blogs devoted to religion, babies, baby pictures, grandchildren, politics, poetry (sorry, it just becomes boring as shit after a while), prayer, dometic bliss, NASCAR, tropical fish, cancer, crappy jobs, languages other than English, recipes, education, wellness or stress management.

I also don't give a shit about value judgements (as in inflicting mine on others and others inflicting theirs on me), keeping score, or guilt.

PS: in 75 or so years we will all be dead and no one will give a shit about any of this. So my advice to you, my friend, is to go for it. Tell the assholes in your life that they're assholes and oh by the way, they can fuck off. Smoke a cigarette if you want to. Sleep with him/her if you want to. At least admit to yourself that you want to do whatever it is you're not supposed to want to do. Christ, do you really think not doing it will somehow make you a better person? Really?

Here's what you'll regret: losing your nerve.

Grow a pair. Do it. Be it. Get your fat ass up off the couch and Go. Fucking. Live.

flying fur

Many weird vibes in the air lately and odd things coming in the way of e-mails and memories and unexpected letters in the snail-mailbox (!) from old, old friends.

One such letter is from my dearest, oldest girlfriend, Leslie. She and I met when we were 13. She came to school with her shorts rolled up really high and wearing a t-shirt that said "U.S. Streaking Team." I thought she was cool. And she was. She and I shared our growing into womanhood years and our deepest secrets with one another. Even if a year or more goes by with no contact other than the usual Christmas and birthday cards that anyone in the house can pick up and read, she can call me up and tell me about something dark and loathsome that she thought about doing or actually did and she knows I will still love her and never tell a soul. Everyone should have a friendship like this.

Leslie is in the middle of unpacking from yet another move--she is married to a career military officer--and she ran across a letter I had written to her when I was neck-deep in the most dysfucntional relationship of my life. I was wildly in love and half-elated, half-devastated and ready to do a half-pike off the roof of my apartment building. Anyway, she scanned the original and mailed it to me. Odd. She and I have not talked in over a year. And I have recently been in touch with the object of my passion--he and I have re-connected electronically (thank god several states separate us now, otherwise I would be doing stupid things that could be very destructive). I read the letter now and recall all the drama behind the words, all the things I didn't tell her. I knew that I could not be with this man back then and I cannot be with him now.

I am house-sitting for some friends and they have three Alaskan Eskimos. They are hyper, hurtling masses of white ecstatic doggie-love. But there are massive white tumbleweeds of fur rambling all over the wood floors of the house. I have vacuumed more here in two days than I do at home in a month. I even have little wisps of angel-dog hair in my coffee cup. I itch. I am going home to shower and wash all my clothes and maybe pop a claritin. Don't get me wrong--the house is clean. Just furry.

mission control

well, hell yeah, it's a mess but I really do know where all my shit is. I do!

esoterica

things I dig:

• showers

people who let me pull in front of them in a traffic jam

Dunkin Donuts coffee: large, with cream and sugar

my sassy black boots

babies (other people's)

the smell of grass as it's being cut

a new hairdo that works

of all the songs in the world, that song coming on the radio or played by the band at just the perfect moment

firemen

my PC and all its components in perfect harmony

punctuation (sometimes...)

long subway rides

men who get it

the expectant hush in a theatre in that moment between the curtain opening and the lights coming up

sex

the New York Times

alcohol

sneaking a cigarette every once in a while

filing before deadline

Gumby and Pokey

the sound of my whole loud extended family from the next room on holidays

the tinkle of my dog's collar as she comes wandering down the hall to find me

the smell of coffee brewing

the smell of gasoline

preparing for a trip to see someone I love and am dying to look at in person

getting into a bed with fresh sheets

sleeping in

staying up all night

getting paid to write

peter

Good night, sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

your absence is unexcused

It makes no sense that I miss you so much sometimes. But we never made sense, so this is par, I suppose.

We hadn't seen each other or spoken in over a year, two, maybe, when you moved away. But when I found out you were gone for good it knocked the wind out of me.

No more chance of running into you. No more eye contact in a room packed with a 100 people. Those moments could wash away years between us and were something we learned to leave to chance, so it seemed to happen effortlessly with little engineering on either side. It was always good to see you once in a while. There was always that tiny, fragile thread still connecting us.

So we didn't end up together, but I always knew where I could find you and for years that was enough. Now, sometimes, it's harder. I drive down some streets and suddenly feel your absence. It diminshes me. When will I see you again? Will I ever? Probably not. Are you looking at the moon tonight too? Do you wince when you hear that song? Or do you smile now?

You remain my oldest, saddest secret, my regret, the one thing I never speak of to my girlfriends. This bubble only has room for you and me. Maybe that was the problem all along.

tail tales

I like reading bumper stickers.

I do not have one on my car because I am way too fickle to commit. Which is why I still have not gotten a tattoo, I mean, what if I change my mind a week later? Buyer's remorse and laser surgery is just too expensive...

Anyway, here are a few of the more interesting bumper stickers of which I have taken note recently:

"OH WELL, I WASN'T USING MY CIVIL LIBERTIES ANYHOW"

"PRO-CONSTITUTION, ANTI-BUSH"

"MY DOG IS SMARTER THAN YOUR HONOR STUDENT"

"MY KID KICKED YOUR HONOR STUDENT'S ASS"

"IF MEN COULD GET PREGNANT, ABORTION WOULD BE A HOLY SACRAMENT"

"DIP ME IN HONEY AND FEED ME TO THE LESBIANS"

"IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, BUY HER ANOTHER BEER"

"I JUST REALIZED I DON'T CARE"

"ENVSION WHIRLED PEAS"

and my personal favorite:

"I MAY NOT BE MR. RIGHT, BUT I'LL FUCK YOU."

picky

My co-worker, Frank, used to work at a big pharma company as a research chemist, I think. It was a scientific effort, I know that at least. Just cannot remember the proper title. Anyway, he rode the bus to and from work every day and so he spent a bit of time parked on the bench at the bus stop. This gave him plenty of time to observe.

He told me once that it was amazing how many people pick their noses while drivng. He found it fascinating as he sat there on the bench, and so he began to count the number of nose-miners he spied each day. He deveolped a graph (since he was a good scientist) to track nose-mining trends and found that people pick their noses more in the winter than in the summer.

Now Frank owns a pick-up that does not always run and he works from home. And he swears he does not pick whilst driving.

i'd know you

if you were the one way in the back of the flock and everyone was as pink as you and stood the same way and flapped around in just the same manner, still, I would know it was you.

And I would have a handful of something yummy and you would know so you would nonchalantly wriggle through the flock and make your way over to me and take a few tentative nibbles from my outstretched hand and I would coo and stroke your silky head. Then you would bite me and run back into the teeming mass. But I would still see you. Fucker.

we had no candle so we used a knife

So we had a pool party to celebrate Amy's official transition to womanhood. She's 30, so what better reason to get shit-faced and jump in the pool? We could not manage to find even one birthday candle so someone came up with the brilliant idea of jamming a kinfe into the heart of the cake. And yes, she did blow on it.

The water in the pool was the exact temperature of urine and we were less then energetic so we mostly floated around like stunned fish after the lake has been dynamited listening to Polly tunelessly mumble and mangle the lyrics to some song on my ELO CD.

Polly had a clean mammogram this week and we are all thrilled. And all her hair has grown back. The other news: Annie has a hunky new boyfriend named Mitch and recently remembered that she really does like sex after all! And Lisa is pregnant. All's right with the world.