Life in the Muddle

low grade depression

2011-09-29T19:14:00.000-07:00

wolves at the door
arrested into a routine of tiny failures nobody notices but me
just enough to terrify
me after all, not safe
after days, not saved
not well, after all

sometimes i think i'm kidding but i seriously do not believe i will ever be happy and it will be strange to be asked over and over again how did this happen to you you were gonna turn that corner didn't you

i could call on someone but i am resolved
to only be what i can make of myself
be it wolf meat if it be

The Artist As A Young Man (Jalen's Poem)

2011-09-14T18:14:00.000-07:00

I AM...

I am creative
I wonder about the creator
I hear the world
I see family and friends
I want a good life
I am creative

I pretend to fall asleep to stay up
I feel happy
I need to not fall on my face
I worry about school
I cry about pain
I am creative

I understand the world
I believe in nothing
I dream about fun times
I try to be good in school
I hope I become a BMX rider
I am still creative

Jalen, September 2011
Poem written from prompts (I am, I need, I hope, etc) given my Social Studies teacher.

A Poem for Jalen Fall 2010

2010-10-17T10:18:00.000-07:00

A Poem for Jalen

I wonder if yesterday
When the walls tore to thunders and underneath skin
Ghouls ghosts and monsters lurked
If it was all a primer for the silk-sheeted handle
Of the palm of the world
Where you and I sit today

Was the terrible—forever breathless—tumble
And the crying, was it all, just a way to make us
Recognize that the handle of the palm of the world
Would not let us fall any further

Is dark the coming light
Is half full glass the only drink
Is the might of the world right
Is this luck, are we lucky

I wonder if all our yesterdays
Held us up like parachutes
Slightly high above the chaos long enough to land us
In the dead smack middle
Of the palm of the world
Where you and I sit today

May we dwell in this heart together
You and I in the palm of the world

September 2010

the 21st century discovers the new negro

2010-06-08T06:09:00.000-07:00

the negro is never new
he shudders at red lights impatient
tramples hymns anthems and anthologies
requires synthetic cell complex
industrial contraption to contain him
the negro is never free
his status is never quo

jacobins in 1500 were south american
in 1700 they were haitian
the negro is never french
ask hegel or any algerian

misnomers for the negro abound
“modern” is most apt
for naming the creation in perpetuity
of the fear of contamination
the negro is never pure
of meaning

the literature of voice
the captivity of freedom
the sex of death and violence of love
the martial dance of every man in every woman
the negro is never woman

for deep communion with a god who hates him
the negro alone has seen the promise land
thus the negro is never
under
any
impression
what
so
ever

the negro’s improbability--
what the twentieth century called “improvisation”--
cannot be digitized
the negro is not innocent until proven
the negro would be art
were art more discerning
the negro is not interrupted
he simply takes a long time to swallow

the negro does not change the world
when he is president
the world changes itself before the unflappable negro
who
ever on his hustle
leaves the building
(the negro’s gon get right back though)

the negro most likely
got another negro to build those pyramids
while he busied inventing hip-hop
all the negro’s ever been
sea cotton sugar or steel
is a man
the negro is a legend in disbelief

i worry history

2010-06-07T11:33:00.000-07:00

can't settle this fight any more than a bridge can forget its shores

destined nations are always compromised in their original promiscuity

it should be totally fine to say mulata in the twenty-first century

nigga however, is a twentieth century hurricane

we have grooved maps of feeling exhausted

circumnavigating our barbed wire brains

but forget it

have another drink dance one other time

just because the first end was prematurely announced doesn't mean history never dies

legitimacy does not worry history

i worry history

Manica Poem Series #1

2009-11-10T08:30:00.000-08:00

it is difficult to talk to our mothers about their mothers

on the anniversaries of deaths

of screaming matches with daughters

fights with sisters

questions about stolen babies

dreams

she said that he said while she stood there holding his perfectly pressed suit

I like you too much to let you go

on my arm today and hate that you are there

not that I hate you there but the air tonight

just calls me and i can float

away from this life we made that i hate

not you

rather than weigh me down just wait in tonight

she said she meticulously pulled at the seams of her dress

made especially for this first outing after the second baby born barely after the first one

twice she had taken the seamstress to the three o'clock matinee

to sketch Elizabeth Taylor's dress

bubble skirted boatnecked wasted time

cinching her not post-baby enough bulging stomach

that now went wedding white on the inside

with dread

in the same way that he had spoken

with neat and small cuts

she tried to pass the night

disappearing the dress in vain

with scissors

Dear Jalen In Parallel Universe

2009-03-03T18:40:00.001-08:00

March 2009

Dear Jalen,

A few days ago a friend of mine found out she was pregnant. The past few days I've been going through those motions with her, the finding out, the freaking out, the being happy, the being overwhelmed, the being thrilled... She has another child and we've been reveling on how the amazement doesn't fade, it simply returns. It's almost like having known what it all is, knowing for a fact that it is real makes it more, not less amazing.

You are having a lot of trouble at school. It could be so many things. It could be that life's troubles have caught up with you the way they have caught up with me. We're going through a extremely stressful time with your dad but it seems we always do, more or less.

It makes teary to see you struggle--my struggling I take in stride although these past six to eight months I admit, I'm fading fast. I have been struggling harder and, because I am worried about too many things, I can't really sleep. It's incredible how debilitating that can be over time...

I wish I controlled things more and I wish I were perfect and by just my being so, your world was perfect too. I know that you know how much I love you, and I know that you know how much I try. But in life sometimes trying doesn't cut it and things get out of hand. You've been so resilient you know, and right now, you still are--just school's a mess for you and I am really sorry. The only guarantee I have is not a when but a how: some kind of way. I'm going to fix it some kind of way. Promise.

The thing about kids is none of us grown ups really deserve you. The blessing that you guys are, the sheer human perfection of your being is so disproportionate to the petty world we grown ups make--it's amazing yall even show up for us. But you do, and your hearts shine that big light and you let out those big laughs like rainshower on our collective blues. Thank god for you kids, man.

My friend being pregnant reminded me of how you and I started our little story, going now on almost 9 years. You were kind of a fantastic occurence: fully surreal and real at the same time. You were the thing I had no idea how to do and the thing I never spent a day wondering how to do. You just were. And we just were. So it was in the beginning, so it is today.

This letter is just me inventing a parallel universe where I can forego my maternal responsibilities and speak to you frankly in a way that I cannot in real life, because in real life, you're too young for the drama. Maybe there is a place in the universe where the energy if not the specific content of this message reaches your soul and lets you know, hey, this too shall pass. I want you to really really know it will get better, and get strong from this knowing. Like a science-fiction dream vision thing that you wake up from feeling like a superhero. Like Peter Parker waking up from that first spider bite.

Love you,
Mama

Family Court Day One

2009-02-11T21:04:00.000-08:00

I like my emotions mine, I admit. They can sing high notes or drop very low, whatever their thing is a particular moment, but I want them coming out of my repertoire. I want my emotions to be recognizable to me so I can play them--tell their story to myself. I like manageable or at the least, concretely malleable emotions. The fucked up has to lend itself to my blog entry: a sitcom? a poem? a journal entry from the single mother narratives? a rant. We love a rant! Whatever it is, my emotions have to be an It. This sort of anti-cognitive, resistant to interpretation and process, stubborn, inarticulate, lead-like, neck knotted, tongue-twisting, edge fraying, kind of emotion? This I don't like. This makes me uneasy. My therapist used to love them though. She'd stalk them with the awkward silence, that just so glare that says "any minute you'd like to have that good cry and lose your bearings, I'm happy to start taking my notes then." Ah, I hate that shit. Hate this shit. I like to hear myself talk but dammit, I don't like to be hurt such that I hear myself babble. But you can't be strong if you allow fear to stop you from surrendering, so here I am, babbling.

There is so much wrong with the family court experience. Start with the name: family court. Even if you don't smoke weed or drink cosmos, ponder that phrase, and it's trippy, right? Think about it, "family", "court"--it's wrong, right? And yet it's right: the recourse that the people sitting there sought, they needed it. I needed it. It's fundamentally about deploying enforcements around your boundaries, your intimate boundaries, the ones you need up when bonds of family don't keep people from behaving like you are helpless. Many people there had more complicated things going on and they needed the law to come into their homes and save them, literally, sometimes not just from the brink but actually from the return of the brink. Some folks there were familiar with the court officers. "Hey what's up, man, how are you?"; "You're gonna have a long day?"; "Plans for the holiday?". Even more mysterious to me, some people were running into acquaintances and even friends. I'll admit total complete ignorance of how that happens. I'll admit and I'll hold on to said ignorance.

The cases about orders of protection or violent altercations were scary to be around. While some of us sat and waited to be called into our hearings, others actually waited to be called to pick up the decisions from theirs--the orders. In those instances, when they would call the two names, two people would come from most separate ends of the huge waiting area, and you would see the body language of who is afraid, and who is terrorizing. Sometimes the person would be small--as in a woman--but sometimes worse, she'd be frail--as in a very old woman that sat next to me with her lawyer and was blind. Eight straight hours is a long time to be in close proximity with what seemed like every little piece of misery in this city, of the domestic time, beside one's own... You're stuck there, quiet, silent, able to hear and so are they, and here you are all, miserable with waiting, heavy with anxiety, running what you're going to say or what was said to the judge--gathered on this bright, unseasonably warm winter day, a family court family. The woman whose boyfriend was holding her real close, I thought she was scared too. I caught her face right away because she was so beautiful, she seemed out of place. I realized her boyfriend was her girlfriend, just extra butchy. And the culprit, who came up to get her court order, along with them, she was her mother. She looked the same, except was 25 years older. She had the same pretty face but chilly.

People don't give a shit about rules in family court waiting rooms. Which is weird. I played a game of counting the number of people who would walk into the area closed off by a door with a red STOP sign on it with the following underneath: Do Not Enter Authorized Personel Only. Sociologically it made no sense to me to be trespassing whilst in court, but this was a majority of people. Something about being sent around from room to room, in a "city government" type building with identical floors covered in more tonalities of beige one ever needed, makes one Just Need Answers Now. And so, one after another, each entertained us with their dance: walk up to the middle of the room; look about for any of us to suggest that we know something (we don't know and we don't care); squint at the room numbers that make no sense; squint back at the many pieces of paper in hand; catch sight of the door with sign; ponder 3-2-1 seconds and walk right in. Only to walk right back out escorted by the irate officer. If they were Spanish speaking, they would pretend to be confused and the very tolerant and warm Latino interpreter would play along (yeah because in Spanish a big read STOP signs means Entrar Por Favor). The Creole interpreter was a jackass to the Haitians, in stark contrast. This was not surprising to me given that I am a veteran of the Immigration offices. There it was Asian interpreters and staff that terrorize their people and the rest of us. I'm sure there's great armchair psychology payoff to analyzing this and I would go there, except, as I said, I'm zapped of my powers today.

Ok, one story, because the universe served it to me without any subtlety. He came in first and it threw me how much he looked like my son's father. In fact at first glance I thought my son's father had repented from his renegade text messages from yesterday "I can't be there tomorrow", and decided to actually respond to a summons. The lookalike walked in and was very much him as I remember him. Same immaculately white, brand new t-shirt under a half-hood-half-prep hoodie (you know those), same dark wash jeans, scruff free timbs. Same absence of jewelry except for good, not flashy, watch; same manicured, clean nails on a hand that ain't never work a day in its life. He was one of the ones that knew the court officers and made genuinely polite and sweet small talk with them. He had been here before--in fact the officer he spoke to the longest knew half the story, his side at least. She walked in looking like I used to look standing next to him when we used to stand next to each other: mismatched. Of course in my days I didn't notice, those things didn't matter, but today, sitting across from them, I saw it. She clearly works somewhere where attire is business casual. She wears grown but still young heels. Her make-up means to be put together but loses that battle to life every day. Her hair was down but there she goes again with the sloppy bun that ages and dishevels her--she doesn't even notices herself tie it. She is resolute but tired. He makes his move to sit next to her. It is hard for her to not move and talk and look and listen to him as if they are deeply in love either because they still are or because it's the habit moving talking looking and listening for her. The intimacy, even while they argue quietly (he *hates* a ghetto-ass scene) is palpable. Her head nods can be measured by how often and how vehement they are at first, resisting his arguments. Later they begin to disappear. They become blank stares, sighs, shrugs--the dance of the exhaustion in her eyes that precedes the capitulation. I overhear him say "communication" a lot. He comes up to the court officer and inquires about dropping the petition. She stands behind him. I think that's what he says because the officer says "Ma'am are you sure?" and she nods. She does not speak then or as they walk away and get into the elevator. He however, hasn't shut up for the entire time.

And One Rant. It makes no sense that you have to meet on the Parenting plain with a co-parent who refuses to parent. What is the purpose or terms or language of that meeting? It's like night and day deciding to show up together in the sky--that wouldn't work, each being quintessentially what the other is not. Sitting in that family court waiting room, surrounded by deadbeat fathers and the mothers chasing them, crystallized this incoherence that has been a central part of my life. What sense does it make for me to sit here and have to chase after someone who doesn't want to be found, in that true existential meaning of the phrase? Not even the sherrif summons someone into their life if they want no part of it. The whole idea of going to court to make a man be a father is obscene to me, on a deep level. This scenario where I go asking for my son's rights--the form being named a petition, it fucks with my upbringing, my sense of place in the world, my pride, and my common sense. Eight hours. Add that to my son's eight years. So eight hours and eight years. And do you know what his contribution was? To both the eight hours and the eight years? Not Showing Up. I am rambling too loudly now, so I'll stop short of saying things that will look too ugly when we're past this. Life is longer than eight hours and eight years and family court, in the end, is about family.

poem in progress 2

2009-02-02T21:16:00.000-08:00

as one side of my life rises
valkyrie
wide and bowlegged
nose up in and to the rarefied
air
of freedom fear fucking and what's fair
the side that would have tomb-ed the beast and bird
mouths itself open
teething
and curses the ground

i have always been at my own mercy
swept up or torn out
by a cacophony of myself
that never stood quiet to wait
for the fully formed thought to state
who i was
i have always not known and just been
it has always not worked for me

peripheries are empoverishments
of the imagined nations
of weak kings and as i am slave
i
think
myself
spatially incongruent all the time
so that i may give
as much stretch as birthing the new day requires

now mother i bore
my deferred taste for war
while undercover agent protecting my cub
i secretly served to learn a taste
for the lion's share
of freedom fear fucking and what's fair
as the new century's babelonia writes itself blank
its dark-ink people stand at attention
uninterested as ever in attempts to forget
that before we gave paper we gave fire

like a skywalker
in light saber six inch heels
i run at both ends towards the same
in battle my death wish is strong
but my life slips something in her drink
life gets death drunk
fucks her leaves her to moan
they two in their morning sheets
soak in not knowing who the other is
knowing such verdicts are more breath than tongue
to their last kiss
the valkyrie's cue to knock

poem in progress

2009-01-27T20:57:00.000-08:00

He says I write too much poetry about myself
I wonder if it’s about the poetry the
my
selfishly I predictably imagine it’s about me
I sigh
I leave the room vanquished I doom myself naked
I tell the same story break
Into smaller parts to swallow whole
Soul shoved down his throat
Wash it down
Eat me
Gloat

I soak
That what he says he says over me
Presuming a twisted tangle for a dance
A stance about subject submissions
A beginning middle and end
And a dancefloor way more than I had envisioned

And?
Well I am just not interested in that
The fact that you deem yourself such
That my hand is being forced
You said “too much”
Poetry
About
My
Self

I say this is not your spoken word poem
From someone known to some who may know him
Not some genesis song
Some this was the day let’s show’em
This is the howl of wind
Sifted through cuts in the armors of golden dreams
The only record of that particular battle
Ever found
Carving the place of the uttered and said on the ground
This, takes care of its own sound

True
Some details have fossilized at the cusps of my mind
Almost phantom-limbing it
Yes there have been knives but there have been wiser
Writing instruments branded here
Clear and ruthless dice
Breathing loudly on the page

I am teaching myself restraint
Letting things drip in heat and wait
Get sloppy
Deteriorate into singulars
The one laugh
The one tinge
The one
Last night to me was a whole epic story of us humans
For instance there wasn’t any sex
But it seemed like the light was wet

It will read "surrender was never a choice"
Its simplicity in narcissism will once again irritate
Self-martyrdom will be suggested as possible critique and
Agreed upon in uniquely inventive ways
Colorful language for a somber occasion people will say
Then they will remember it was to my face that they said
You are not
Pen but page
Not the right age
Size prize not coming backstage
They will remember a muzzle
We tried to reason with her they will say
Before it came to this
Warned her
Try journalism or history fucking rewrite a play
She wanted the tortured selfishness of verse
Excessive
The hearse will look tricked out from below ground
Watching them mostly cry
I’ll be taking notes
For the next poem

Just
Like that just like dead
But kicking I face myself I tinker
The entire world my squinting
Dazzled at the freedom ring that’s thinking
All my thoughts for the me that’s busy
Writing too much poetry

What Is The Topic, Or Chat Poem#1

2009-01-23T07:08:00.000-08:00

where you been at?
why you don't bother to grin back?
in the wind that bites, i'm bitin cigs
car seat singed my lungs lend their life to a fight with reckless thoughts

i have been the wreck and less the thought
i have been the wind
i have been the lost
i don't remember the war that i know was fought but mostly
i have been

surrounded so I have no choice but surround you

the dance is of the surface
the word is of the depth
i move in close into the border
it blends the sweat
the bitterness

find me where winters rest
and blend with memories of my kin
the winds carry them for me

mine travel in the brain
some in the vein
mostly in the way you say I talk too fast
I carry them first
and myself last

sometimes they carry me
like a weapon
like a revenge

and sometimes I catch you
quiet and still
like the end of a song

The New Year, New York

2009-01-01T22:49:00.000-08:00

I like walking west on the wide streets towards my 1 train. Maybe 14th or 23rd, if it is late enough to begin to be deserted but not yet be terrifyingly empty. I like to feel myself at all sides isolated, by windy wide streets. On a night like tonight, it's a solid cold squaring off against my back, each side of me, my face. It's the physical equivalent of successfully overcoming writer's block, the blank page here being the sustained silence deep inside. I walk in it, and that walk--the cadence of my heels on the empty pavement, the shifting shoulders caving into my frame to keep me warm, the hair blowing however it wants, the way I think my face looks to everyone it passes (how does it look?)--that walk becomes the story telling itself to me.

Impressions: death of love

2008-11-25T20:53:00.000-08:00

The most inconvenient thing about the death of love is that it happens inside and well, it’s no good having dead things inside. As long as it took to stitch itself to every minute figment of your entrails, that’s how long it stays in there, dead. Highly inconvenient. For one, it takes up vital space—can’t nothing move in while dead love is there and frankly, nothing would want to. I’m not sure the issue is that dead love stinks—though maybe it does. It is likely about the essence of things: the living won’t abide the dead so near. I can’t remember when love died and sometimes, for the sheer magnitude of its life, I can’t help but wish I had a better sense of the moment it did.

In its time, it was soaring. All breath and words caught in trampling time, all resonance and power—the push, the answer, the truth. All that delirium, that acute feeling of transcendence, that “closest to God” nonsense people talk about. How the surrender first came... And most of all, that feeling. He seems to reach inside with his hand, slowly goes in and finds a note, and flicks it—just one note, your precise note, and it reverbs. Today though I stand in the shadow of the valley, I still believe that feeling is the only fucking point. It is as a believer that I wish I was more present in the moment it died. To sit attentive, and make the catalog of me in that death and knowing myself changing. I wish I had that chapter from which to read the others. Maybe I’m wishing for scale? I wish I had listened to the sound of the ringing note fading. Instead, it was completed silence that caught my attention.

A Recipe For Disaster

2008-11-13T09:17:00.000-08:00

My son sits in front of his math homework purposely looking like a cow at the slaughterhouse: clueless and unaware. We know that children get scared and frustrated when they don't understand content--you've seen those adorably simplified "Sylvan Learning Center" type commercials: "But Mom, I hate homework!!!"; and Mom's like "We thought Timmy would never learn!". And don't get me wrong, I take all that seriously and am generally supportive. My son does bring an extra ingredient into the mix and that is his high opinion of himself and his inalienable right to fun times all the time. My son is genuinely outraged that displeasure exists in his life at all. He can't believe the audacity of math, how dare you math, come in to my day, and ruin it? Don't you know who I am math? Fuck You math. This is who my son is and I have no illusions about it. And this I shall not tolerate. I throw around my "Boy do you know Obama used to get up at 430 AM to do his homework with his mother???", to no avail. Have you ever seen an incipient eye roll? It's worse than the actual full on eye roll because it barely happens--only just enough to piss you off but not be actionable. After endless variations of stop daydreaming--what are you doing--put down my damn cell phone--pick up your damn pencil before I--, I take the high and mighty approach we mothers can't seem to leave alone. I'm talking about the oft used tone my son derisively describes as "speech giving":

"It is apparent to me how much you refuse to focus. This is not the hard math, this is not even the math that takes a long time. I can see it in your face that you are choosing to not think about it and think about fun things instead."

He barely keeps from smiling. I pretend to not notice and continue to my grand finale:

"My helping you wouldn't do any good if you don't focus. And let me tell you, in math, not focusing is... A Recipe For Disaster." (dramatic pause, glare).

My son's face now matches the gravity of the situation. He is definitely hearing me now, I self-congratulate. He opens his mouth to speak and I await his contrite answer. And this little ******* says to me:

"Yes, but... How do I cook it?"

November 6 2008 (AM)

2008-11-06T07:38:00.000-08:00

It's November 6, 2008. Joe Scarborough is bitching about the liberal media's bias and how Obama is not a saint. My son's grumpy morning routine has hit its high note where he deliberately refuses to tuck in his shirt and says crazy shit like "why does a uniform have to mean my shirt is in? My shirt out is more comfortable. There's no rule about shirts, you're just mean." Everything is as it always is at my house in the morning, except that when Joe bitches about him he says President-Elect Obama.

Ah, sweet delirium, twilight zone of contentment, emotion, sweet love hangover, extreme cross-historical cultural-critical meditative state, straight up INSANITY that is the world today. Obama is president. The New York times has clearly turned to cool and fuzzy articles about having little black kids in the White House: Mahlia wants to redecorate, Sasha is a ham, we're not sure what kind of puppy we're getting, grandma Robinson's moving in, Sidwell Friends school may have alumna Chelsea call the Obamas and pitch, the DC socialites are fearful they may not be cool and hip enough to host the Obamas but gosh darnit, they've all got Beverly whatsherface on speed dial and brand new subscriptions to O magazine and Essence. Get your Stevie Wonder playlist ready on Itunes while you're at it. I feel straight up drunk.

Red Light Special

2008-10-31T10:44:00.000-07:00

They sat together the way they always do, looking like they’re a couple of 15 year old best friends (or lovers?) who got shrunk down to under 4 feet. He with his bright orange hoodie over his Catholic school boy’s uniform of navy and plaid and corduroys. She, because she had made a point to get taken home to change before the play date, in her favorite outfit, which is any outfit accented by her Hannah Montana patent leather and sequins flats and the matching purse—both accessories that he had handpickedly given her for her birthday a month back. They sat together the way they always do as if they’re not six and eights years old; as if I’m not actually there. Today the topic was more serious.

--I almost didn’t make it. Oh my god I’m so excited I made it!
--Why almost you didn’t make it?
--Cause my dad—I have to go to my dad today and we don’t know what time and he—
--You’re going there tonight?
--Maybe. Like, we don’t know what time. Like he—he says he’s coming one time and then he’s late or like he doesn’t come and then… He’s crazy. And you know why else he’s crazy? He calls and doesn’t talk to the babies.
--Why not?
--I don’t know—he’s crazy!
--But the babies are so cute!
--I know. That’s why I don’t like him too much. I mean I do but—
--I know. Mine is crazy too. Mine is even crazier.
--They’re all crazy-crazy-crazy.
--Yeah…

They began to then discuss other things—an amalgam of his latest WWE wrestling news she didn’t really care about but listened to, and her latest girl-cousin drama he didn’t really care about but listened to. Then we got to the movie theatre and they watched High School Musical 3, enraptured. After the show we took her back to her mom who was stranded at the McDonald’s parking lot waiting for said “Crazy Dad” to show up. He was half an hour late when we got there. We waited for another 10 minutes with her. It all was very familiar: the being stuck waiting, the calling frantically, the humiliation of being you, a grown-up, your kid’s mother, and being stood up like that, by the same fucker who is never on time, who never seems to care about how humiliated you feel when you’re made to stand like this, looking stupid in front of your kid, stranded.

I told him that we should probably leave her and her mommy alone because “Her dad is about to pick her up and her mommy is stressed out because he’s late; you know how that is.” He knew how that was, so he gave his friend a big hug and I gave her mother a hug and kiss. We walked away and it was clear he was worried about his friend. At the first corner red light he said to me, “Her dad is crazy like mine.” I said, yes, looks like it. He then asked “Are there a lot of them, you know that act like this?”. I felt awkward and implicated and like I didn’t want to misrepresent something, neither the state of the world nor the state of their lives as children of fathers who won't be fathers. In real time, all I had was an honest answer: “I think so. That’s too bad but yeah, I think so.” We started to cross the street and I almost did not believe what he said next. I had to come to a complete stop on the other side of the street, and look at him to be sure. He was finishing the thought, he was looking up at me, and so yes, I was sure he had said it. What he had said as we crossed the street changed me in that way only what your kid says can changes you: profoundly but in a fleeting moment of the day. “I hope I don’t turn out to be like that.”

I think there wasn’t a question in the tone, maybe just a reticence, but that is what my son said to me he hoped. I told him that of course not, he would not turn out like that, that he already had not turned out like that. Look at how your friends love you, look at how I love you and your whole family loves you--it’s because you are such a good person. That won’t change—you’ll just be even better at it when you grow up. You care about people’s feelings and you don’t act crazy at all. You’ll be a great guy, I promise. (You were a better man than your father when you said what you said when we crossed the street but if I said that you right now you wouldn’t understand). Then I rushed us into the grocery store, into candy and cookie dough choices, into as much sugar and distraction as possible and by the time we came out of there, we were piecing together High School Musical 3 lyrics with “my favorite part was” snapshot reminiscences. And laughter had come, sweeping. Sometimes once he sees the truth my job is to walk him away from it fast because, I think, for him the truth is like the sun: he needs it to survive, but if it gets too close to him, parts of who he is burn and disappear forever.

Nigga=Love

2008-09-16T06:43:00.000-07:00

--So karate or basketball?

"Karate and I'm still mad that you didn't sign me up for Tiger Shullman's."

--Whatever. I had to find you a karate class uptown in the neighborhood.

"Now why would you want a karate class in this neighborhood? Don't you know it's all niggas and gangstas? "

--Ok, first of all, we don't like the language being used but also, you've actually lived in a neighborhood full of niggas and gangstas and all kinds of wack stuff and you know this one is not like that. It's nice!

"Well...maybe not gangstas but it's got niggas!"

--Like who?

"Like me,"--he now begins to point through the wall at the buildings where his friends live--"and Chelsea, and Jason, and Wilson and Moises."

--Yall niggas?

"Yeah we're niggas."

--What does "nigga" mean?

(without hesitation and with patience in his voice)
"In our language, nigga means people you see almost every day."

Michelle My Belle

2008-08-25T21:10:00.000-07:00

I thought I already had had my Michelle Obama moment. It was way before that purple dress with the Azzedine black belt too... When I realized who she was, merely by watching her on Larry King, I also realized she was just as good if not better than he was.

I was very proud today because what Michelle had to do was come and defend herself, and that is a hard challenge when you know you have nothing to be defensive about. She had to fight the ghosts of the Angry Black Woman panic. She had to fight the ghosts of gender treason. She had to fight the ghosts of what it means to be a woman of exceptional achievement, descendent from slaves, in a 200 year old country drunk in its own race theatrics.

She had to manage to manifest a truth, a real spirit, a human being across endless smoke and mirrors. It is sadly a very familiar experience to many women like us, this self-alienation at the hands of other people's perception of you. Racism's meaning to me is fundamentally the realization that independent of who you actually are, someone will presume to understand something about you from the mere accident of your pigment. It is like convincing people that you are not Pinocchio but a real live boy (rather a real girl) on a daily basis.

Her challenge was immense and what made me cry with pride was not just that she talked about motherhood and of her knowing that he loves the children she had with him (a very subtle nod to a community of women where that is not the norm). What did it for me was the way she obviously stood there, just knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she was woman enough for this job. It felt to me like Michelle Obama, just like I suspected, was supremely confident. Just like I suspected, and knew, and hoped and well, just like I needed.

All Hail The First Lady. She killed at the Democratic National Convention.

It's Not TV, It's Not The New Yorker, it's HBO

2008-07-16T20:52:00.001-07:00

It is interesting that given what has been on everyone's mind, Charlie Rose featured both David Remnick of the New Yorker and David Simon, of the Wire and now Generation Kill. Of course in this context when you say "David Simon" you mean as you should, David Simon and Ed Burns. Although I admit that Remnick made a great impression and a convincing case for his magazine's "tour de force" cover this week--an impression that went a long way towards relieving my personal fatigue with "satire 101", it still felt, I don't know, superfluous. As I felt that what Remnick was standing atop of the mountain defending was a bit flimsy, I felt bad: I mean the stuff is important you know? So why was I feeling like still saying shut the fuck up?

It became a bit clearer in the David Simon segment when Simon was talking about the purpose or general intent that he and Burns have when they work. He broke it down into parts, more or less. First they want to look at things and come up with an angle or a conclusion about them. Then they want to tell that story and then they want to do it well. Doing it well for him doesn't mean much beyond making sure it's correct. And he expressed that vociferously--that they want their characters to be real and recognizable to their human-real life counterparts. He wants Marines to feel like this series is real the way he wanted drug dealers, addicts and homicide detectives to feel Wire was real--the way The Corner was real (he mentioned how The Corner, like Generation, was able to use real names such was the absence of license taken with the facts). He based this standard in part on his coming from a newspaper/journalist background.

We all know what The Wire attempted to do and succeeded in doing. It renders a portrait of America informed by a deep, searching survey about American life. Simon spoke about it being a story about the end of the American empire's myth of competence. In other words, The Wire was about depicting that the system is broken and we do not care and no longer strive to fix it (on the contrary, we have adapted ways to manage and even prosper in the broken). Simon then discussed how he is taking that same thematic lens and setting it next on the musical culture of New Orleans, its significance, and the possibility of its disappearance. For Generation Kill he said the purpose was to make the general American public engage with the fact that they are at war. He rightly suggests that excepting the military and their families, the vast majority of Americans are psychically, emotionally and materially "buying out" of the war.

Simon talking about the real utility of the TV work that they are doing really brought home my frustration with the New Yorker cover. I'm not even sure I'm right to feel that way but I do. I have a real sense of a need (and this is likely a collective need) to be exposed to degrees of truth and levels of complicated thought and conversation in these (dire) global times. I have a real sense of a need to know more, be made to feel more and think more and be a better grade of participant in whatever conversation we're all having. Maybe that's my issue: by necessity my standard's really high for what provocation I find useful and critical. And also by necessity, my tolerance is currently very low for that which I find to be useless provocation. I think right or wrong the landscape shows me that the New Yorker satire is useless provocation when so much is going on.

At this point in the show Charlie Rose became fascinated with Simon's state of America refrain and got into a semi-argument involving Charlie demanding that Simon's next project be about "the state" of America. He said something like go and find a story and characters that can communicate this clear sense that you have about where America is at. It sounded like Charlie wanted the meta-Wire. True story: I've been wishing for a long time for a piece of TV or theatre or a play about these times. In my mind I keep waiting for Tony Kushner to write this the way he wrote Angels. The awesome character-driven narrative of the most intimate humanity against the backdrop of the most enormous socio-historical canvas, but for the 21st, post 9/11, near death of Planet moment we're in, when the geopolitical plates are shifting and there's a cultural tantrum occurring. I imagine how only Kushner's fearless language could square off with so vast a subject matter (and eventually win). Now I am thinking that in my dreamworld both Kushner and Simon apply themselves to this task... Then HBO can put it on. And I can die happy.

Nuts & Bolts

2008-07-14T18:26:00.000-07:00

Jesse Jackson is funny. It turns out he saved his most vociferous criticism—partial castration!—for Barack Obama. Give and take the finer points in the whole “absentee father” speeches Obama’s given, they were nothing compared to the infamous Bill Cosby NAACP speech. It’s ironic that when Bill said truly demeaning and offensive and outright mean things like:

I can’t even talk the way these people talk. I don’t know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk...
Who are these sick black people and where did they come from and why haven’t they been parented to shut up?
The White Man, he’s laughing -- got to be laughing. 50 percent drop out -- rest of them in prison.
You got to tell me that if there was parenting -- help me -- if there was parenting, he wouldn’t have picked up the Coca Cola bottle and walked out with it to get shot in the back of the head.
Therefore, you have the pile up of these sweet beautiful things born by nature -- raised by no one. Give them presents. You’re raising pimps. That’s what a pimp is. A pimp will act nasty to you so you have to go out and get them something. And then you bring it back and maybe he or she hugs you.

...Jesse didn’t reach for Bill Cosby’s nuts. He was sitting right next to him too, so he really could have.

This whole Absentee Father/Personal Responsibility thing is a territory built for mining and so here we go. None of the musings that follow are conclusive or meant in that way, they are more like an account of what the theme inspires me to think about.

Personal Responsibility
That’s really the smaller aspect of the problem. I think Obama, whose speeches always include a “we should meet fathers halfway” clause preceding the harsh criticism, realizes and admits that readily (another reason why Jesse the Nutcracker was out of line). Personally I would rather we look at the colossal structural impediments, historically-cumulative types of impediments to individual self-cultivation and self-sufficiency rather than talk responsibility.

Often those of a sound sense of personal responsibility—say, me and most people I know—didn’t just pull that out of a proverbial boot inside our asses. You have personal responsibility usually as part of a larger framework of socialization and (I’ll fucking say) training in institutions and in your environment. It would be hypocritical for me to pretend that my home is a favorable environment for my son’s emotional and intellectual growth because of my higher grade personal responsibility efforts. Bullshit; I’m not like “going out of my way” here. It is what is—I come from that framework, I embody that framework, that framework’s all around me, it is reflected everywhere I look in my life and everywhere I have been lucky to go. I have personal responsibilities that are unchanging; I know people as having them and I understand the world as being framed that way. I don’t think however that those personal responsibilities exist outside of personal agency, personal upward mobility, personal success and a personal sense of power in my own life. My own personal interpretation and experience of the world, so to speak. In other words, I would not have the one without all the others.

In the ten years I tried to have a relationship with my son’s father, this was a central issue we struggled to resolve. I would say, in my youth and naivete, that it took 2/3 of that time for me to comprehend that the two of us had profoundly different “frameworks” that we were working with. Some of what came easy in mine, appeared common sensical and unescapable, was barely in his. He came from and is from a world vastly different from mine in terms of what is personally possible and what is personally best for personal survival. I thought certain things were actually impossible—like not working for a living past a certain age. I thought other things were improbably--like routinely doing cost-benefit analysis about whether or not to risk incarceration in order to make some fast money. Guess what? Not impossible, not improbable. I lived in a neighborhood where block by block that is not only possible it is pervasive and the dominant reality. I am simply not sure a society can sustain an appeal to the personal responsibilities of those whose personal outcomes that same society has consistently and relentlessly sabotaged. Hence I would prefer we talk about correcting for the sabotage first, before we talk about anything else.

That said, I am not sure that part of correcting the sabotage does not involve a conversation like Obama’s Father’s Day speech. Maybe, no matter what the framework, no matter what the structural realities and impediments, maybe we need—in the sense of the fuel of our own humanity—to preserve our ability to address our personal stake and power and yes, responsibility. We may need to counter the ill effects of the sabotage precisely by talking about how we could do better in its circumstance. I further believe that leaders, insofar as the word means anything, have the obligation to remind us to engage all aspects of the issue. I think if a father who did not have a father wants to say something about that, he damn well can and should. If Obama can do it instructively, with proper context, and with empathy—as I think he has—then I think he can say what he is saying. I prefer a measured critique leveled at adults (Obama’s) than a vicious rant leveled at youth and youth “culture” (Cosby’s).

Class
This would be an easy enough discussion to have if we could talk about class. But here if you talk about class they act like you’re being rude. Nevermind that all the subterfuges used to avoid frank discussion about poverty vs wealth turn out be far more rude and virulent and toxic at worse—read: the culture of poverty type argumentation. If we wanted to talk about class we would realize a couple things off the bat.
--it is counterproductive to look at what are clear results of economic deprivation (and it’s offsprings) as cultural or “ethnic” or race-specific problems; there is much more in common in the lives of poor people of every race in this country than there is between the lives of say poor black people and the Obamas. And no, having started poor and then graduating from an Ivy League is not the same as being poor today, even if you are of the same race.
--why can’t we walk and chew gum at the same time? Why can’t we talk race when it pertains, talk race-class-gender when it pertains but talk class what that pertains most? It’s really simple math: when you have a permanent deprivation of the basic means of subsistence, physical, intellectual and emotional, and when you are surrounded by these levels of deprivation, you will not do well.

These attacks on black culture “from the inside” are a legitimate symptom of our deep bonds. They reflect that we feel our pains as one community, that we feel as one community that we have to fix “our” community. Fact is, for all the good in those bonds, they are used against us to suggest, in fact to oversuggest the distinctiveness of said community and our responsibilities within. These are not “black” problems, these are problems of poverty and deprivation in one way or another.

Father Knows Best
I’m highly skeptical of the cultural argument about absentee fathers being the chic “Negro Problem” issue of our age, and I think that’s bogus on a couple counts. We’ve already addressed that some really strong forces are getting in the way of people’s best outcomes and those include good parenting. But forgetting all about that, I take personal offense to a blanket acceptance of the fact that children are at risk when in single parent homes. The fact is that many societies are matriarchical in nature, and mothers raise fine sons. I refuse, in 2008, to have a social critique that reifies heterosexist norms, especially when—duh—the fucking heterosexuals can’t even execute their own norms. What do I mean? I mean that if it takes two motherfucking straight people in a home to raise some kids and defend the free world, we're fucked. Straight people ain’t really ever get that shit right at the rates you would think they, for a 2,000 plus year paradigm domination, ought to. It seems ridiculous to me, when we know how well the heteronormative family strucure is failing or flawed, that we would sit here and lay at the foot of black people that they are the champions of the broken homes. Ok, half black kids are in that single parent predicament—that’s bad. I guess that’s worse than whatever the general number is, but only if you break it down by race, which I find no reason to do.

The equal parent father is such a flimsy statistic, I resent we’re that using it as a lithmus test for anything at all. Fact is, patriarchy dictates, the women raise the kids. So a bread winning father is not absent in that sense, but for the most part the bulk of the emotional, socio-educative aspect of child rearing is the woman’s responsibility, so he is absent. For the most part parenting IS a one person job--and usually the woman's. Recently the NY Times mag featured a fascinating article about the state of reproduction in some first world countries. It brilliantly correlated a cultural dysfunction with situations of near extinction for some European countries. Unlike its Scandinavia and the Netherlands where babies are steadily being born to career women, Spain, Italy and Greece are enjoying what is called lowest-low fertility rates. This is the rate of basically extincting yourself. The social scientists figured out that it is because though “evolved" in expectations that women work and have careers, those countries are carrying a cultural expection—I would call it a cultural reality—that the burden of the balance of work and child rearing be solely the woman’s. Those countries culturally remain very gender asymmetrical and working women, having to do the brunt of the child-rearing and home-making, aren’t up for it. The Scandinavia/Netherlands model is a model where the money is where the mouth is and women are extremely supported in their work-balance challenges by their government. Not being a social scientist of any kind I’m going to go nuts here and predict two things:
1) the Greece/Spain/Italy paradigm is true of most of the oh let’s call it vast patriarchical universe and yes that does include where these Absentee Black Fathers dwell;
2) if we had absentee Scandinavian fathers the kids would still be ok in Scandinavia.

I’m not trying to stretch the facts to make a polemical point. I really sincerely believe that in my mother’s Cape Verdean household where I was mostly raised, my grandfather, the great patriarch-provider that he was, the sitting authority at lunch table, the purveyor of high minded discussion and cultural capital, and my all time favorite person, could be considered to be absentee. Some have said he did not emotionally connect with his children and he was like all his friends were. He did not deal with cuts and bruises of the flesh or the soul, he did not watch for homework getting done, meet with teachers, organize birthdays and field trips, he did not manage the day to day existence of the children or balance that with his schedule. Of course the distribution of labor accepted that this was not his task, his task was bacon bringing and the preventing his wife from having a fulfilling professional career of her own. But it’s easy to imagine that if he were to encounter consistent challenges to his ability to bring home the bacon his contribution to child rearing and the home would dwindle to almost none. He’d lose his place in the framework, he would be absentee. If that happened, I venture that in that situation, if my grandmother had the ability to provide for her household, the kids would be okay. Oh wait, it did come to pass, he did do that, she did do that and we were okay.

We may need to look harder, more closely and especially way more broadly when we want to talk about absentee fathers and/or single parent homes—or further, non traditional non-heteronormative homes. We may want to shoot higher than the easiest targets for critique. If i takes a village and the village is there, a single parent can do it.

Community
For all our sophistication, we are flimsy animals. I mean, we shed fur and stood upright and lost the ability to pick shit up with our feet like monkeys only to find that we freeze in cold, burn in the sun, and need clothes and shelter. Most of all, the weaklings that we are, we need community. We are community dependent—which is to say, social. There is real genius in our knowing that and becoming community-makers as a species. We made societies, we made that unfortunately named thing we call civilizations, we organized into villages, nation states. We made bureaucracies and governments—empires and such. Small to large scale we go on overkill on the notion that we need each other to take care of ourselves. But apply as we have applied ourselves to the task, we have created situation after situation—none more presciently illustrative than these United States of America—where our dire and desperate need for community is only matched by our profound incapacity to make a decent one. We really fucking suck at the community thing. And insofar as this is true for the planet, the majority of the almost 8 billion of us are not going to do very well.

This is not a black fathers problem, this is a failing community problem on a global scale. We have an empathy deficit of global threat proportions. We think this next person, say a black absentee father, is very specifically distinct from ourselves in the way they fail to meet their responsibilities. We think that next person, say someone crossing the border illegally, is vastly different from ourselves in the way they pursue a means of providing for their family. We just don’t see each other at all sometimes...

Snapshots of My Son

2008-06-23T14:49:00.001-07:00

1) Recent Snapshot
Looking at a photo of my teenage parents and newborn me he asks how old exactly they were then.
"They were teenagers like I told you."
But how old, he asks.
"My dad was about 19 I think here. My mom was 16."
He looks at the picture again, and in the matter-of-fact way says:

"Oh. She's a Juno."

(Note: we are experimenting with PG 13 films and live action in general. And we just watched Juno. I found Juno particularly gratifying--I sort of skipped the explicit contemplation of "abortion" and he did not catch on--but we were able to explore a looser idea of pregnancy and parenting. We were able to talk about adoption (like Madonna? Yeah like Madonna but that baby's mommy is dead whereas Juno knew all along she would give the baby to these people). We also were able to further detach parenting and family from a) biology and b) nuclear family concepts and landed parenting squarely in the realm of "love".)

2) Flashback Snapshot (I found this in a journal from when he was 3, under the title First Time He Dropped Hints)
My son's watching his show "Cyberchase" on PBS and I am forcibly cuddling and kissing him. He is annoyed but I tend to not care because he is delicious and adorable. He says:
"You know? On Cyberchase girls don't bother boys..."
I pause and don't understand. Then I think I do but think this can't be happening so I ask,
"Am I bothering you?"
He looks me dead in the eyes and says:
"Yes."

I Just Pour

2008-06-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

I just pour
Outside the cup
I harden
Into not enough
I'm off ground and can't run
I dissipate like air on fire
When all I want is to drip
Drip
Drip
Drip
Into a clear puddle
Over a clean pavement
On the silent block on my street

Bitterness...

2008-04-30T14:49:00.000-07:00

The Nation reported that back in 1991, another candidate had sort of pointed us in the direction of those "bitter", frustrated, gun totting people.

"When their economic policies fail, when the country's coming
apart rather than coming together, what do they do? They find the most
economically insecure white men and scare the living daylights out of
them."

Yeah, you know it: one William J. Clinton.

Bare

2008-04-23T21:13:00.000-07:00

My favorite lecture given was called The Dark Night of Our Souls’ Democratic Vistas. It linked Whitman’s poem about the dark side of the hubris of empire with the religious concept of the Dark Night, an example of which were the dark times that Mother Theresa experienced from 1948 until almost the time of the her death. It was revealed when her letters were published that during very painful years, long years of service, she did not feel God was with her. Also, John of the Cross, who when in captivity under the Inquisitor wrote his Dark Night poem. Incarcerated and under torture, John composed and committed to memory 40 stanzas. In them he recounts how in that darkness it was safe for God to come find and console him, completely hidden from his tormentors. I was not looking forward to being sequestered in a chain hotel in a remote New England town for three days with what I would fondly call supernerds. But there I was, fully into this first of many lectures, at this conference. I reminded myself that it was a rather decadent privilege to spend time throwing around big ideas. Even if sequestered in a chain hotel in a remote New England town, if not especially.

Once I threw myself into it, it was on. On the one hand, the professors spend the days giving brilliant talks on Cicero, Darwin, Cervantes and Aristotle; on the other hand, they spent two rowdy nights closing down the hotel pub with me. In the pub which was called The Pub, we enjoyed the musical stylings of a brillinat and married, duo whose repertoire fittingly seemed to ponder the question of "what is a classic?": Fleetwood Mac or Donna Summer? The vocalist, a woman who was half Joan Jett, half Susan Lucci, and all woman, while her partner was a Carlos Santana look alike, but darker and with less hair. On the second night we were at The Pub, along with the band, we were entertained by another duo, this one of fans. They were clearly a fixture of Saturday nights at The Pub and whatever the song, their dance was the samba, I think, but ballroom style. Or maybe it was proper disco, Saturday Night Fever style. She, probably mid 50s but hair blonde like Britney that she wore it in a style that she clearly mastered when she was 15 and never changed. He, mid 70s, lightning on his feet, a show-off, twirling his woman, clearly the Gene Kelly among his people. He was wearing an ascot tucked in a white shirt and although some of us said it was just a turtleneck, I prefer to remember it as an ascot, mostly because I know that’s how he’d want it. After they had danced to 4 songs in a row and shown no sign of distress, respiratory or otherwise, the band challenged them with their impeccable rendition of Enter Sandman by Metallica. When they passed with flying colors, there were digital cameras offered to me and mentions of YouTube but I felt that was not in the spirit. If the spirit could be rendered in flesh it would have been Mabel who, when she walked in, around 10 PM, had trouble walking. Her back was curved and she wobbled on her heels. Unemcumbered by all that, Mabel, walked in splendidly alive, a beloved regular, and was greeted with “it’s great to see you off the wagon again Mabel!” She wore lipstick and wonderfully tasteful earings. It was clear that this was the highlight of her lonely weeks and we were glad for it. The only dance Mabel could dance was with her scarf, which she twirled, as provocatively as a stripper twirls a bra. She sat at the bar long enough to sip one glass of wine. They sang her Patsy Cline songs of course.

There’s a way it all could be summed up in the space between the panel about the erotics of and what happened in room 107. The paper about Moby Dick poured over the journey of Ishmael—whose name I was told at the panel, means “God will hear”. The woman was pretty and nervous. She spoke breathlessly about Ishmael's development from the purely intellectual study of whales, outlined in the endless nomenclature of those middle chapters of the novel nobody likes to read, to the real experience of his down and dirty close encounter with the real thing. Much discussion time was spent thinking about the corporeal dimensions of our pursuits of knowledge. Much was time was spent talking about teachers who consciously engage students erotically in order to teach them well. A man who was trying very hard said “before you know it here” (and pointed to his head), “you gotta feel it here” (and pointed to his chest, which relieved me for I was certain he would grab his balls just then). A woman who could say it better explained that to teach her students, they have to come to care about her as a person, and understand that she cares about them and that their relationship matters. Myself, I told them to remember not just teachers but parents as the first teachers who traffic there. The panel left us all sort of spent, strangely happy, for subtly obvious reasons. At a most basic level, I extrapolated from the discussion that you can do your 6 hours of panels but only if you can also do 4 hours of booze at The Pub, playing at who can guess the cover song the quickest. Darwin (another good lecture that one was) said that in our “bodily frame” we humans carry the imprint of our “lowly origins.” Lowly, as in, you’re going to have to get down.

The idea really did not fully cross my mind. I was not ahead of that curve. We were all just drinking together. Most of us were from my own university but two were recent graduates of the program now teaching in a small liberal arts college and he was one of those two. I intermittently saw that he was looking at me perhaps because I was looking at him but I am not sure. He volunteered how much and how late he was used to drinking in his own world. He told me tales of the local bar and how he had come to become one of the guys. He quickly mentioned a brother, a sketch of a failed marriage. He told small bits of things about himself that conveyed complex things simply. His adeptness at communicating through so much booze and noise called attention to itself, and kept surprising me. Our interaction narrowed to just us and implicitly signaled that other folks would leave and we would stay. I found myself happy to look at him. He was for lack of better words, very professorial in appearance despite being young. Tweed jacket or close, great shoes, black rimmed glasses, perfectly slicked back hair, a classically distinct appearance, topped off my a great tie. All of it fitting like a second skin. The idea of any of it being removed was as inconceivable then as it became necessary later.

When sex enters the picture I am very used to exiting it, whether the person I’m with knows it or not, so the way the air trapped me in the picture was new. This was not one of my scripts where I raise up all my pathologies vis a vis sex and then stage the situation to cure them. It dawned on me, somewhere between our deciding against sneaking (naked) into the hot tub and being (naked) in bed that the whole communicative aspect of sex has barely existed for me. I think this was an epiphany. In my sex life there have been few if any dialogues except the ones I have with myself. Embattled and precarious, my sex life has mostly been about leaps to foregone conclusions of success or failure, without any of the steps in between. My sex life has mostly been me, like Ishmael, talking shit about whales that terrify me but that I have never seen up close. Between the hot tub and the bed there was a moment of us just sitting, our legs in the hot tub, when I had to confront this: the impending next steps and my inability to take them now that I was present in myself. He watched me get stuck there, and he moved in, and he kissed me in this way that was like if a kiss held your hand to cross a street. He gave me a bridge-kiss. Back inside, in the room, we were mostly silent, steadily distancing ourselves from the point of being strangers. In that quiet, a delicate sensory communication was taking place. It involved touch and taste and entries into each other, all towards figuring it all out. To me, maybe figuring out, what this was different, and how we were this sexy suddenly, and how so tender if he didn't even know me. To him, clearly not so much to figuring out, except maybe very patiently, figuring me out. And he did that, through some of the easiest and the sexiest moments.

At the Dark Night lecture the professor had proposed that the Dark Night could also be thought to be the penumbra, the time post darkness that ultimately ushers the light. Maybe it is not that the light is not there, he suggested, but rather that the light is so bright that it destroys our intellectual faculties for grasping it. Maybe we have to accept that in the quiet dark moment your head can’t wrap itself around things and you just have to feel your way through.

I am the Leftover

2008-04-15T19:44:00.000-07:00

It’s like: how when glass breaks and you clean up the shards, sometimes only when you walk barefoot on what you think is clean floor do you notice—because you cut yourself—that there is more. There on the seemingly clean floor of this or that day, where I dare walk airily and barefoot (I even felt free!), there they appear, and they cut. They are smaller than I thought they could be. Answers to my questions about when will this brokenheartedness end limp out of me, unconvinced.

I’m the leftover, I’m the left. I am no longer someone that is loved and I am not held and I am not wanted and I am not needed. And when I need I am not met. All the while I have to sit and watch it happen to them, barely one giddy eight-year old’s account removed. My son barely has a memory of a family with me and his father in it while, before my eyes, he falls in love with the idea of a new family that definitely does not include me. The details, the concrete logic and inevitability of it—hell, even the fundamental reality that all involved are better off this way—that’s a universe entirely distinct from days like this. Days where the world is one 360 degree mirror on the worse fears, most lonesome darkly held fears I ever had. And days like this I have had too many--they are like dogs that roam the streets for endless hours but no matter how far they get, they find their way home, only dirtier and hungrier. All my dances end at hasty midnight and my stardust-happiness, shortlived and aprehensive all along, is blown away. My carriage a pumpkin again.

Manica Series#1

2008-04-02T13:43:00.000-07:00

My grandmother--phenomenal woman, Manica, a legend awaiting proper treatment in biography that I have every intention of making for her, celebrates her birthday today. Everything about her has always been legendary including the way she eats a chicken and the way she gets sick.

Firstly, about the ailments. Manica never has normal diseases—only obscure variations of them. A case in point was when I was about 8 and she had an ear infection. But she didn’t just have an ear infection, she had, what was in my child's mind, the Worse Disease In The World. She had an ear infection so brutal that it filled her ear cavity and surrounding area with disgusting secretions, it deformed her face, it caused swelling that shut down on side of her face, it put pressure on her brain, it made her delirious and outright nasty looking for us little kids in the house who were forced to go in every night and give her kisses goodnight. It put her near death. The Ear consumed the house and populated with it with girlfriends, who moved in to serve tours of duty as caretakers to her and to us, her now orphaned husband, children, and grandchildren.

My room’s door was by the staircase and it felt to me like this staircase always had two women on it: one coming up to keep watch, and one coming down from keeping watch. Most often the one coming out would fall into the arms of her replacement, in tears and in terror. They would whisper. I would watch this turning of the guard, and think in my tiny trembling heart, “is she going to die?”. The impossible had never seemed so close.

The Ear also made it necessary for her father, the progenitor legend, the Most Famous Doctor In The Land, to begrudgingly allow an inferior human being—meaning, a surgeon other than himself—to perform this life threatening surgery on his daughter. He did not allow this because he was her father and too emotionally involved. He only allowed this because a stroke years back had given his hands a tremor, and he knew steady hands were vital to avoid permanent facial nerve damage.

Legend tells of this conversation between my great-grandfather, the eminent Dr. Fonseca and the poor man who would operate on his daughter. It has been said that Dr. Fonseca threatened physical harm should his daughter come out of surgery with even the slightest permanent paralysis. Threat or no, the surgeon performed with my great-grandfather calling the shots in the room. My grandmother had surgery and The Ear was healed. But not before we had another scare because Manica has violently unsafe reactions to general anethesia. The way her father put it, "whenever we put her out, we risk not being able to wake her up."

Secondly, about the chicken. My grandmother eats everything a chicken has to offer except its head (as far as heads she only loves them on fish). Growing up it could be hard getting through chicken soup dinner because her own bowl would always have two chicken feet sticking out. To me, they looked like little children’s hands with overgrown nails. Her bowl would bring to my mind the little children from the story, who are kept in captivity and fattened for the witch who will eat them. The nails had grown long in captivity, you see. My grandmother would relish the sucking and chewing of those chicken feet. The noise like a horror movie soundtrack. My grandmother would next attack her chicken's bones with her teeth and commitment. Her chicken bones were completely consumed, the plate cleaned, like chicken never happened. Through a methodical succession of tactics to tear, crack, and chew bones, my grandmother incinerate her chicken. Often, her enthusiasm would lead her to choke. Her doctor sister, the younger but no less legendary Dr. Fonseca, would admonish, her face a complete dead ringer for her father's, “Nica, one day you are going to really get in trouble with a bone.” The choke was always an operatic, tragedy of a choke—a choke with flailing arms, tears, red face, hacking. Those were the longest few seconds when I would ponder, again in my tiny trembling heart, “is she going to die?”.

Today on her birthday, I got word from Cape Verde that while Manica is doing great, she just had emergency surgery to remove a chicken bone that was stuck in her throat.

Goddamn

2008-03-16T09:44:00.000-07:00

What is most interesting about the attention that Pastor Wright is getting is that off the bat, unless someone like Donna Brazile is at the round table with the rest of the pundits everyone is framing the question this way: those comments are nothing short of appalling and how can Obama claim to be the post-race candidate when that’s what his pastor preaches?

Added to this comes the media’s juxtaposition of the Pastor Wright sermons with Geraldine Ferraro’s blatant racist comments. The idea being to express this sense of false outrage by we good people that this level of discourse exists at all. Let us all reject and repudiate these “crazy people” in our midst, who say “crazy racist shit” none of us have any clue about…

It is hypocritical to suggest that a critical strand of American intellectual and and political thought, the notion of black resistance, sustained for a long time by the fiery rhetoric of the black church, is the same as some racist white woman’s assertion that a very competent man running for president is just “lucky to be” black.

It is also hypocritical to pretend that nobody knows what either Ferraro or Wright is doing, that theirs are peripheral ideas when really they are both very different off shoots of American racism that thrive in fact, in every day American dialogue. On the one hand, the idea that black people are victimized in this country. On the other, the idea that au contraire, black people are given free passes in this country.

The defiance of Pastor Wright has very much defined liberation theology everywhere in the world; church and spiritual life have been the nourishment of oppressed people everywhere in the world. Specifically in black American life the statements of most courage and most militancy have come from the spiritual leaders and with good reason because theirs is the work of, as Donna Brazile put it so eloquently, nourishing souls of people who live to be broken down.

She also pointed out that there is a great generation gap here: whereas Obama imagines and in fact, embodies a possible reconciliation, his pastor comes from a generation that relied on vehement recrimination. Recrimination because they had seen the rise and fall of the idea of reconciliation. Context matters.

When one in four black men between (I think) the age of 18 and 24 is or will be incarcerated, Pastor Wright has no cause to stop preaching what he preaches. He falls in line with an American tradition that has produced everything from local leaders like the mayor of Newark, to historical giants like MLK; his are the same roots for almost every aspect of (black) American arts and culture. I offer at the end of this posting, Nina Simone, and ask that we keep her in her proper context, one that includes at least slave narratives, Public Enemy, Spike Lee and the origins of rock n’roll. I mean, what the fuck is everyone shocked about? Didn’t we just have Malcolm’s birthday? Is anger really that inappropriate or unacceptable?

We all know that many people agree with what Geraldine Ferraro said. Suddenly we want to pretend that what that woman said out loud has not been there all along while the first viable black candidate to the American presidency hits the world stage? Most of the Obama criticism has hurt so deeply not for its explicit content--there it most often lacks substance--but for its implicit racism, where it gets traction because it connects with a visceral dark place in the national conscience where the sentiments of Ferraro, pretty much, hold sway. We have been hurt deeply by it and, not incidentally, have been unable to counter it without being muzzled by accusations of playing the race card.

Isn’t that so ironic? Whereas black people have always known to keep their critical race insights in either the privacy of church and home or seasoned with the sugar of comedy or satire or art, precisely because we understand that people like Geraldine Ferraro are more common than we like to pretend, people like Ferraro have never had a problem saying exactly how they felt, also because they understand what they believe is the held belief of many. So we're all basically on the same page folks.

(1963) Nina Simone

The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last

Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don't belong here
I don't belong there
I've even stopped believing in prayer

Don't tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I've been there so I know
They keep on saying "Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Washing the windows
"do it slow"
Picking the cotton
"do it slow"
You're just plain rotten
"do it slow"
You're too damn lazy
"do it slow"
The thinking's crazy
"do it slow"
Where am I going
What am I doing
I don't know
I don't know

Just try to do your very best
Stand up be counted with all the rest
For everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

I made you thought I was kiddin' didn't we

Picket lines
School boycotts
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
for my sister my brother my people and me

Yes you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie

Oh but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow!"
"Go slow!"

But that's just the trouble
"do it slow"
Desegregation
"do it slow"
Mass participation
"do it slow"
Reunification
"do it slow"
Do things gradually
"do it slow"
But bring more tragedy
"do it slow"
Why don't you see it
Why don't you feel it
I don't know
I don't know

You don't have to live next to me
Just give me my equality
Everybody knows about Mississippi
Everybody knows about Alabama
Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

That's it for now! see ya' later

Love Letter To Michelle

2008-03-05T16:08:00.000-08:00

While charges of gender-treason abound all around me, I turn my attention to the kind of woman I actually do admire. I admit that I felt embarrassed when I realized, watching her on Larry King relatively recently, that beyond very superficial consideration of her kick ass fashion and the genuine affection she shares with her husband, I had not paid much attention to the woman who would be First Lady. This to me was yet another strike against the mythology that claims Ultimate Victim Status for Hillary, a woman who, as far so many women are concerned, has been incredibly privileged and powerful (at the very least for being an entrenched and influential part of the government of the biggest world superpower currently engaged in an occupation war). The fact that even I wasn't really paying Michelle Obama any mind strikes me as proof positive that something particularly bitter sits at the bottom of the gender-race cocktail that some of us drink from and some us never taste.

Michelle Obama was on Larry King and I watched and was in genuine awe. I think for all her husband's charisma, she by far exhibits more: more power, more strength, more fight and more poise. She is that rare creature that is only loved by those whom she would have love her, while he is the creature that everyone falls in love with. It's clear which quality is best for a national leader--his, but it's also clear which quality makes me proud to be a woman--hers. You see, Michelle Obama is loved by those who have long held a fundamental belief in their personhood and a commitment to the protection of that belief when pretty much the history of the world has been a string of vicious attacks on it. To me she, even more than he, communicates self-possession and an adamant refusal to cede the slightest inch to the notion that she somehow belongs in some exceptional, Other reality. More impressive is that she does it without appearing to be posturing. I don't mean that she is cocky, and I don't just mean that she is confident. I mean that she IS herself completely. We all know that women are made vessels, and targets, for all sorts of shenanigans in the big patriarchical circus. We all know the ways that projecting gets even trickier for women of color. Even more specific for black American women in America. When you see Michelle Obama and really look at her and listen to her and see her countenance, it seems to me a challenge to find room for projections, open ended sentences one could give predictable ends, meanings one could arbitrarily derive and crazy racist/sexist fantasias one could enact: she's the fully constituted person she is and you're just talking to her. When she was swiftboated anti-patriotic by the right wingers, she actually had said this was the first time she was proud of this country. These are her words and though they may have called up the swiftboating, stating them plainly and fearlessly as she did also called up something else: context. Many understood exactly what she did and did not mean. I regret the need for this cliché, but she is (powerfully) real. And not only that, she is fully aware of the necessity of her realness-in fact, she is deploying it against all.

On Larry King that night she was fantastically self-assured and when he asked the typical question of "are you ready to be the first black first lady", she barely allowed him to finish before cutting him off to answer, simply,

“I’m who I am I. I’m ready for it. That’s who I am.”

Larry King didn’t get it and many other people probably don't get that this is a very significant way to phrase that answer. She intends in that phrase, to say, of course I am ready to be first black woman anything. She is answering Larry King, and also answering this curious, skeptical, possibly ill-intended and certainly ill-instructed public. She is answering a whole historical narrative about who she is and filling up her own space. She is, without any drama, making a critical point that is rather profound. She is explaining that she was born ready for the fact that for most of what's worth fighting for and living for--be it the integrity of her body, her education, an adequate measure of respect or even the White House; be it daily survival or grandest aspiration--if she got there, she'd likely be first. And if not first, one of very few. That was true when she got good grades and a good education early on, and true when she graduated high school, and true when she got into Princeton, and true when she got into Harvard, and true when she got her first job, and true when she got her last job, and true when she quit it to help her husband run for highest office in the land. Her not being ready to be first then, same as for me and and so many like me that I love and admire, would have been tantamount to not being ready to be much of anything.

I won't even do a disclaimer here and say maybe I am overthinking this because frankly, I've been damn near drowned in some of the most exotically toxic essentialist gender critiques for my support for Obama in recent days. Those interlocutors-all women, all white, all Hillary's age--have not pulled any punches or spared any romance or even sobered any of their thinking on the matter, and so I won't either. I've fought the nefarious pull of suspect identity politics in this election as best as I could because I stand firm on the conviction that it is lazy and a remedy akin to the effect that old antiobiotics have on new strands of TB--while shit was potent once today the organism it fights has evolved and adapted and we need new medicine. I held out and but having recently been pulled back by the fabricated Obama backlash cum Hillary surge, I now feel entitled to say this: it makes me giddy, from my toes to my ears, and it makes my heart skip a beat, to think that this barely 200-year old country, once one of the most brutal slave societies known, could soon have its First Lady, its feminine icon, its '08 Jackie O. be one Michelle O.(if judging by last night's superb battle royale black number with the punctuating white pearls, I think she’s indeed ready).

We have long understood who he and what his arrival on the scene means but we’ve not spent enough time talking about the fact that along with him, she would come as well. The First Lady to be is a black American woman whose Africa is not the appealing, up-by-bootstraps Kenyan immigrant story but slavery, whose biography did not take her from Hawaii to Indonesia to Kansas but grounded her in that typical American city by way of the South experience, whose persona is called the familiar names (your New Yorker politesse may say "mordant" or "stone-faced" but others will say more colorful things soon enough). Michelle Obama is a woman whose blackness is that fait accompli, that known target, that common place this whole mess is about anyway, that black American blackness.

...One of the women with whom I recently disagreed about my choosing Obama said to me, by way of friendly critique, that this election had the country "working through some serious subconscious stuff". To that I say, you have no fucking idea.

the shifting feeling

2008-02-25T14:12:00.000-08:00

the shifting feeling
of my soul like so many marbles under my feet
chokeholds on undisclosed locations
every sound has one ear drowned in noise
every breath is less
for all the feeling I’ve done some remains
that I can’t wear
no matter the cold
no matter how old
some maps were resolute and suicidal
some just faded away without conviction
if the first pill to swallow is that I have left home
then the last should be
that this circus will burn

Looking at Janet Jackson

2008-02-17T21:41:00.000-08:00

Rich from Fourfour the very brilliant pop culture critic writes about ageism and sexism in Margeaux Watson’s EW review of Janet’s album. Watson says of the record the following:

If you thought the 41-year-old Jackson, not unlike Madonna and Prince, would drop the nympho shtick and embrace more age-appropriate songwriting and production instead of competing with the Beyoncés and Rihannas of today...you'd be wrong. Fans rejected the childish, soft-core dirty talk of 20 Y.O. ,but rather than see that as a signal to grow up, Jackson scuttles the maturing process and regresses even further to the creepy, X-rated lyrics that weighed down 2004's Damita Jo. ''I misbehaved/And my punishment should fit my crime/Tie me to something/Take off all my clothes/Daddy, I want u to take ur time,'' she coos on the title track, an S&M fantasy that borders on a repressed incest memory, set to an R&B slow jam co-written and produced by Ne-Yo.

Rich says the review is so ageist and sexist that it is “hateful”. He says in part:
The Puritanism runs thick: Janet's "childish," not yet grown up and even regressing for including a song (one! ONE!) about S&M. Watson packs in the qualifications, as though she's trying to divert us from what she's really saying: at 41, Janet shouldn't be talking about sex. I'll up the explicitness and say: bullshit. First of all, don't fetishes tend to develop as a result of extended sexual maturation? I know it's not always the case, but still: in any facet of life, it seems that it takes time to cultivate taste, explore interests and build experience to make experimenting worthwhile. Frankly, I don't want to hear anyone under 40 tackling S&M-- leave the advanced stuff to the grown-ups, thanks. Secondly, I guess by labeling this "shtick," the implication is that Janet's being insincere…
Making this about age is straight-up intolerant. Hateful, even. But at least that makes the sentiment transparent: as is always the case with hate, the problem doesn't come from the hated, but the hater.

I found this exchange very fertile ground for my consideration; you know, like a good jump off point for thinking more about things I was already thinking about. Since reading Michael Warner’s phenomenal The Trouble w/ Normal I’ve been sort of awoken to the fact that gay sexuality has much to teach me about my sexuality. Listen Straights I know it's a trippy idea but it makes complete sense if you, you know, swish it around your mouth a little bit. Gay male adoration of straight female sexuality fascinates me mostly for being the antidote to the self-loathing I and most straight women I know suffer. Most straight women I know would love to think as highly of themselves and their pussypower as the average gay man thinks of both. Another way this works is that in being non-normative sexual beings gay men have basically enacted sexual agency under severe oppression in ways that makes me think we straight bitches should take a page. In reading M. Warner I woke up to the fact that as a subjugated sexual agent all the time I spend having normative sex is time I spend participating in my own subjugation; it’s precisely because my sex “belongs” on the inside and not out there on the periphery that it helps hold up the walls that entrap me. Gay sex and other non-normative sexual practice and condition wide ranging, though perceived as “confined” to the outside and peripheral, in reality routinely bulldoze those same walls that entrap me. One can see how reading that book made it patently clear where I should start paying attention... But to get to an idea central to how this Rich vs Margeaux disagreement plays out for me:

--Rich and Margeaux approach, consume and read Janet’s sexual maturity performance completely differently given their positions vis a vis it. Maybe Margeaux's a hater but maybe much more is going. To put it more polemically, maybe Rich isn't aware of what all else could be going on.

[Disclaimer: I'm doing this (suspect) binary between gay men and straight women here not because I don't recognize I'm leaving out tons of people but because that's the divide Rich and Margeaux represent in my thinking.]

There is a way that women are obviously represented by representative women like Janet—we know this. I think as subjugated sexual beings, we await narrative resolution in those representations. Unlike gay men who choose to project onto some Divas an idea of sexual power that is truly transformative because it's not rooted in experiences of its impossibility that would negate it or diminish it, ultimately, most straight women live real sexual lives that lack the benefits and realities of said power. Most women I know live a long time before sex is really good and even longer before sex is really theirs. And the ones who get to the promised land don't get to just stay there; they are ever vigilant of being overthrown and momentarily thrown back to the age of bad sex, entrapment, unagency. I think when we are honest with ourselves, straight women admit to being very defensive about all that--how could you not be? And we also admit to being very invested in the way our sex symbols are representing themselves and in the ways that they age their sex symbolality. I think we sit in panic that having barely gotten to a place where sex is good and we are in control we would have to rather quickly move into an arena where it could be rendered grotesque by (say) Janet. I think Janet's fetishes (to use Rich's apt phrase) may be hitting too close to the place our memories of a shitty sexual trajectory call home--and I don't mean S&M or violence or anything specific. I mean the simple fact of not evolving. Janet does the same thing over and over and over--it doesn't evolve and we, intuitively knowing that salvation for us sexually very much is about evolution and transformation and growth, we panic.

I can’t really explain how profoundly implicated I have been, how invested I have been for years, on the notion of whether or not Madonna (who is, very much, the icon "of my choosing") would get plastic surgery eventually. On the one hand, hey it’s not that deep that she got it, yada yada yada. On the other hand, I’d be lying if I said that was the happy ending I was looking for. It’s tough to be girls, it’s tough to be women, it's tough to love ourselves and our bodies. If any woman was in my eyes the superhero who could show the way to age and be okay with what it did to her face, to me, it was Madonna. The fact that she didn't means something to me I don't think it means to any dude, period.

This whole sexuality thing for us is a pained trajectory fraught with real humiliations and there’s a way in which the entire thing can be tacky so much of the time, hell, maybe we can’t stand to have Janet miss the mark. Straight women have been given so little in the way of experiences of sexual fluency, diversity, texture, risk, discovery and agency, maybe we have become unable to be generous towards our icons. Our icons rightly or wrongly become entrusted with illuminating what is usually a rather dark path for us. The experience of normative straight female sexuality in all that it denies us perhaps creates unfair expectations that someone like Janet would be trailblazing for us. I’m not sure that Janet is not trailblazing by the simple fact of Just Doing What The Fuck She Wants To Do--most likely she is. My point is more that when Rich thinks about What Is Janet Good For, what makes her great, he is not thinking about all the shit I think about when I ponder the same. Or maybe he is, but not in that implicated way I am thinking about it. That way maybe Margeaux is if not explicitly thinking about it, perhaps experiencing it.

Perhaps what’s most fascinating for me is the idea that in an ideal world, Rich would be right, and Margeaux would be wrong. In that ideal world where we roam free and fly the freak flag we wanna fly, Janet doesn’t owe anybody a resolution for the fact that well, they’ve really been "disciplined" into a coma of imagination and courage just being straight women in the world. In that ideal world, she is not the martyr for the straight female condition, after all. In that perfect world it would be one woman, one vagina, to be electoral about it. In the world we do live in though, it works different and in that world, to keep the metaphor alive, we may be dealing with a reality where Janet or Madonna are more like Supervaginas--their judgment can decide the fucking fate of the free world!

I really think that beyond the obvious point that we Straights are wound up pretty tight and get rattled easily about perceived sexual improprieties looming in the horizon (or even the notion that everybody has better sex than we do), there’s lots more at play in Rich and Margeaux's disconnect on the topic of Miss Janet… I am not sure where this whole train of thought of mine goes from here, or that it sustains scrutiny, actually. My own sexuality seems to be insistently dialoguing with notions of homosexuality/queer politics (which I imported wholesale from that Michael Warner book) and I am finding that to be the proper and most instructive breeding ground for its maturation. I think there’s much for me to learn here so I’m going to keep thinking about it.

Mama, what is therapy?

2008-02-07T21:39:00.000-08:00

My son asked me about therapy. If I went (which I do) and why do people go. Believe it or not, he saw it on Nickelodeon. His favorite cartoon Timmy Turner of the Fairly Odd Parents—another Nickelodeon genius cartoon—was in therapy. “Do you lay down on the long chair too?”. I told him I didn’t, that mine was the sort where you just sit on a regular chair. “And what do you talk about?”. I told him therapy is pretty much like the talks that he and I have about things in life, both the regular things and the tough things, things about feelings. He said “Like the time you slipped up and told me Elmo was real?”; I agreed yes, that could qualify. He mentioned another time, “you remember when you were really sick?”. And I did, this was maybe three years ago when I had a 10 day stomach virus and lost about as many pounds. “I remember you had a bucket where you threw up and it was almost like half full and the stuff was green and I remember Papa would not come help us. And I had a little cut on my big toe, remember?”. I did not remember the big toe cut, in fact I don’t remember much from that week plus of throwing up 10 lbs of water weight… He then said, “I hated him that day. We were alone and hurt and he did not come help us.”

My son has been acting all kinds of crazy lately. Energy is off, his mood is off. He is acting out. He is fucking up his grades, forgetting his work at school, forgetting his glasses at home. Forgetting what I asked him to do or taking forever to do it and getting a smart mouth when I get frustrated. All kinds of crazy and I was not understanding why he was doing this. And on and on we went the last few weeks and yesterday when he curled up and asked me about therapy and then said, “can we play therapy” and told me he had lots of things he wanted to talk about, I realized, even before he said it, that he had to talk to me about his Papa. And so we did. I talked to him for a very long time and then convinced him to call his father and tell him some of what he had told me, which he did. That talk was fine but my son’s voice was cracking and it often is. The places that hurt me are not just present places, they are long buried places and insofar as I feel like I relate to that little voice cracking, it sort of sends me in a spin. Any parts of my childhood that are evoked by my son’s life are not good signs for me. In fact that is what I live for and struggle against—to make sure his is as distinct from my experience as could possibly be. And for the most part, actually for the entirety, it is. Still, when he hurts and I can’t make it stop because it’s not me he needs, that hurts. And when he hurts and brings it to his father's attention and I hear in his sadness a world of aprehension, an utter lack of confidence in his rights vis a vis that love, it's like somebody cuts off my air supply. My baby, asking for love--what the fuck?

The feeling is strangely claustrophobic. This feeling of drowning or choking to death in front of this parenting that is imperfect, this world that is not as kind as it should be, this reality that fails to be as good my wonderful kid that’s in it. You try and keep perspective and you try and keep a longitudinal view and you know you are a great parent and hell if somebody fucks up, it usually ain’t you and your kid’s ultimately okay, but in the moment the thought is just “help!”. Help me make it okay, I have given everything that I have God knows, this is not for lack of trying very hard and putting every bit of what’s best that I have on the line every day, I have held nothing out—all for him to be happy and he is not happy—help!

In those moments you make lots of mistakes and I for one, tend to call his father. I call and I want to voice my son’s needs, articulated beyond his seven year old claims and questions, I want to communicate the urgency, I want to connect with that moment—all the things that he tells me because he trusts me but which in their frankness pierce really deeply—I want to pass that on. I think silly me, if his father heard it like I heard it then… But it’s not the case. His father’s barely finding his own way, he is drowning always, choking always. He’s up to here with his own trials and tribulations and remains forever concerned with defending himself, forever unable to face certain facts, adjust certain behaviors. Our son's needs, certainly his hurt feelings are to his father just another, perhaps the worse incarnation of the world, once more, passing judgment on him. It must be neutralized, danced around, placated. I believe he is mystified at his inability in some recess of his being; I believe that in some place deep down where he can be honest he wishes he could stop being a primarily selfish creature. Selfish people make lousy parents: both he and I know this too well.

Knowing all that I call and maybe that’s just pathetic and without reason. And what do I get? Chewed out for being melodramatic and long winded and wasting his time saying things he already knew because he “already talked to him last night.” I’m making a very rare concerned co-parent phonecall, and I am feeling very badly and I need support and he’s telling me—no, he is brushing me off because he “already knows” everything I’m trying to say?! I go off and I am that stereotypical voice of the righteous indignation of the single mother, my own cliche makes me cringe but it's way past me at this point. I go totally nuts. Really? Because I don’t think you already know how many times he forgot something somewhere the last two weeks, like a person under serious stress. I don’t think you already know how much of a hard time he’s getting from his teacher and then from his mother while he fails to get it together. I don’t think you know how these past weeks have ruined his beautiful grades he worked so hard to get. I don’t think you already know that every time you disappear he assumes it’s something he failed to do to keep you interested. I don’t think you already know all the things he wishes you all did together, I don’t think you already know what it sounds like when he says, looking at his friends’ father talking him to the game, “I wish I had a Dad like that.” I don’t think you already know that this last disappearing act evoked in him memories of other ones, and that he wanted to talk about them and that he remembers details. I don’t think you already know because I’m the one whose job it is to hear and see and know. I don’t think you know a motherfucking thing.

Memories...

2008-02-06T10:03:00.000-08:00

From NY Times article on child development:

In his view, toddlers are not just small people. In fact, for all practical purposes, they’re not even small Homo sapiens.

Dr. Karp notes that in terms of brain development, a toddler is primitive, an emotion-driven, instinctive creature that has yet to develop the thinking skills that define modern humans. Logic and persuasion, common tools of modern parenting, “are meaningless to a Neanderthal,” Dr. Karp says.

The challenge for parents is learning how to communicate with the caveman in the crib. “All of us get more primitive when we get upset, that’s why they call it ‘going ape,’ ” Dr. Karp says. “But toddlers start out primitive, so when they get upset, they go Jurassic on you.”

Yeah man, I remember that.

The Raw Vote Part One

2008-02-05T19:08:00.000-08:00

This is not a coherent post. This is just me writing while I watch Super Tuesday unfold.

Right now Huckabee is addressing the people of AK and Hillary is said to have "beat the Kennedy famiily" by winning Massachusetts. She won New York, New Jersey and all kinds of other shit. The delegate count is still super tight.

I personally am California Dreaming. Hoping for a Latino vote miracle which seems improbably since they report that she is winning that by 60 per cent.

He is kicking it up a notch at carrying whites, white males, women, and Latinos are going 60 per cent con Hillary. Well....

In independents, get this, Obama is like 60 to 30. You tell me who will be the tougher candidate for Republicans to beat? Exactly, our guy.

Some thoughts that I am having is that it's looking like young people are not showing up in the numbers they've shown up to see him speak to vote for him. And this is not the election for that scenario to reprise itself.

I am thinking that for all the talk about a change the boomers hold the night by simply doing what they always do-show up to vote. Over 40 yr olds, over 60 yr olds.

Obama just won North Dakota caucus if you must know. Alabama and Georgia made us as proud as South Carolina. Go New South.

The Black Vote is present and I am proud of it.

A friend just asked me how I am feeling. It's 9:45 PM now and I told her: "I am not prepared to lose." That pretty much is how I am feeling: like the world has no room for things not to go our way. For instance, what would I tell my son?!!

Pulling slowly away from my belly button though, the drama of the Republicans with the front runner everyone loves to hate McCain--wow! Red states don't play: they are unforgiving.

Speaking of red states, Hillary's campaign sent out "spin" memos outlining how contrary to what had been claimed "by the Obama campaign" she can carry "red states"; the entire Red Punditry cracked up when they heard that shit and said some version, "yesh right, try to win AK in November."

In terms of RAW VOTE TODAY only a few hundred thousand votes separate Hillary and and Obama both being around 2 million plus votes, and only about 4 delegates; this is now 10:20.

The question of the day is--is wait, before that--CAN I STOP HEARING HILLARY CAMP TELL ME THAT THEY DID SO WELL WITH THE LATINO VOTE??

The question of the day is--wait, how much do I love Chris Matthews?

But really, the question of the day is WHO WILL WIN CALIFORNIA?

The whole aportioning of delegates thing is really stressing me out.

Invocation

2008-02-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

"There is something happening when Americans who are young in age and in spirit – who have never before participated in politics – turn out in numbers we've never seen because they know in their hearts that this time must be different.

There is something happening when people vote not just for the party they belong to but the hopes they hold in common – that whether we are rich or poor; black or white; Latino or Asian; whether we hail from Iowa or New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina, we are ready to take this country in a fundamentally new direction. That is what's happening in America right now. Change is what's happening in America.

You can be the new majority who can lead this nation out of a long political darkness – Democrats, Independents and Republicans who are tired of the division and distraction that has clouded Washington; who know that we can disagree without being disagreeable; who understand that if we mobilize our voices to challenge the money and influence that's stood in our way and challenge ourselves to reach for something better, there's no problem we can't solve – no destiny we cannot fulfill.

Our new American majority can end the outrage of unaffordable, unavailable health care in our time. We can bring doctors and patients; workers and businesses, Democrats and Republicans together; and we can tell the drug and insurance industry that while they'll get a seat at the table, they don't get to buy every chair. Not this time. Not now. Our new majority can end the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas and put a middle-class tax cut into the pockets of the working Americans who deserve it.

We can stop sending our children to schools with corridors of shame and start putting them on a pathway to success. We can stop talking about how great teachers are and start rewarding them for their greatness. We can do this with our new majority.

We can harness the ingenuity of farmers and scientists; citizens and entrepreneurs to free this nation from the tyranny of oil and save our planet from a point of no return. And when I am President, we will end this war in Iraq and bring our troops home; we will finish the job against al Qaeda in Afghanistan; we will care for our veterans; we will restore our moral standing in the world; and we will never use 9/11 as a way to scare up votes, because it is not a tactic to win an election, it is a challenge that should unite America and the world against the common threats of the twenty-first century: terrorism and nuclear weapons; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease.

All of the candidates in this race share these goals. All have good ideas. And all are patriots who serve this country honorably.

But the reason our campaign has always been different is because it's not just about what I will do as President, it's also about what you, the people who love this country, can do to change it.

That's why TODAY belongs to you...

...in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people.

Yes we can.

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.

Yes we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom through the darkest of nights.

Yes we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.

Yes we can.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.

Yes we can to justice and equality. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can.

And so TODAY we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in America's story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea – Yes. We. Can."

A Declaration of Independence

2008-02-04T12:08:00.000-08:00

I hold these truths to be self-evident that I will not be entrapped by tacit questionnings of my gender politics in this election. I’ve already ranted like a lunatic with all the fury I had at that silly Gloria Steinem column in the NY Times But this line of argumentation persists and insists and will not be denied. Today a friend sent me this rant from the Women’s Media Center and Stanley Fish’s je ne sais pas, Feminist Manifesto?, which includes the brilliant line
"The closest analogy is to anti-Semitism. But before you hit the comment button, I don’t mean that the two are alike either in their significance or in the damage they do. It’s just that they both feed on air and flourish independently of anything external to their obsessions. Anti-Semitism doesn’t need Jews and anti-Hillaryism doesn’t need Hillary, except as a figment of its collective imagination. However this campaign turns out, Hillary-hating, like rock ‘n’ roll, is here to stay."

Well cry me a motherfucking river. No seriously. The perversion of that paragraph almost has no bounds but I was floored by the hypocritical use of anti-Semitism. Was that a smart turn away from using racism as the most obvious term of analogy? Because if it was meant to be smart, it in fact was rather dumb. That said the two columns taken together triggered in me the need to stop dancing around this issues that rattles my cage so, and to engage. I don’t mean engage the arguments only as much as I mean to engage my own reasoning—find that place inside where my outrage is born. Most often and probably to more dramatic but not necessarily more productive effect, I tend to just voice my outrage like life depended on it. So here is some of what I am waging battle about.

Nobody talks about Hillary's power the same way nobody talks about white women's power whenever they feminist-monger us to death. This is an old (blood) sport and I find that engaging in it in this election is distracting from the point, for me at least, and very toxic. On an emotional level, the persistent inability to grant me the autonomy to say that I am not doing a "pick race over gender" thing when it comes to this election is profoundly dehumanizing. On an intellectual level I find it offensive. Of course, NOW, Women's Media Center, Gloria Steinem and all of Oprah's irate white female viewers can't really engage me on that point and they don't even need to do so to still call themselves feminists. And you know why? One way power is clearly made visible is by its having more options than the rest of us. Mainstream liberal America loves binary identity politics and hates those of us who complicate it--its most classic brand of feminism is no exception. But if I'm not their problem, shit they're not my problem either. And I'm talking about some, I'm not talking about genuinely powerful sisters in the struggle like these.

Alec Baldwin's blog on Huff Post has the Obama equivalent of "Beat the Bitch" t-shirts in a newspaper clipping he found. I can't even imagine what other shit is going around this country when so recently nooses were making a tour of campuses and schools... I will not be so naive as to think that because the racist vituperation that surely is out there against Obama is so foul in fact that it cannot be worn on stickers, that it is somehow more benign or less pervasive than the sexism that plagues Hillary. Just the way people say his middle name Hussein like it's the F word fully suggests to me what time it is, as if history plain and simple wasn't enough.
And yet all of the above is the sort of neither here nor there. It is precisely the sort of make-me-cringe-break-my-heart shit I am trying to avoid and ours is a society whose fundamental treatment of women of color has been to put us through this sort of a ringer time and time again. I for one would not be able to live with myself as a black woman if I engaged this with any seriousness and as they say, believed the hype. This can be a argument beyond myself: every time a certain insular brand of white liberal feminism put us to the question we would flounder if we answered on the simplistic terms presented. With them it is always about, "What is wrong with you that you find no empathy with Hillary's plight as strong, stoic, misunderstood powerful female leader!? At long last have you no decency, ma’am?”

My question whenever the Hillary gender victimization is paraded is to wonder why blatant sexism of the sort she's subjected to is always more potent to the general public than say, the daily racism against youth of color which I feel is pretty much this country's way of life and which I feel acutely as a mother of a black/Latino boy. Lets go back to the point about how Women’s Media or NOW or Steinem can't engage me: what use should I have for a feminism that doesn't understand what it is like to bear a child that's not worth the same as another child? Youth of color in this country have a crippling deficit of possibilities both real and imagined and are overwhelmingly educated in pipelines to penitentiaries or to the military--disproportionately boys like mine. Just because nobody wears "Beat the Black Kids" t-shirts don't make it okay or less hurtful and painful an experience. It doesn't make it okay to deploy a peddler of trash like BET founder Bob Johnson to trash an icon like Obama for pure, crass, political gain. Oh but look at me, playing that shitty race card, right? This is what triggers the anger.

The failure has always been in realizing that we did not cast ourselves in the periphery of peripheries as women of color (and I could say, specifically as black women)--we were cast off. It is therefore not our job to imagine a community--or a feminism--that includes us. It's their job and when I say they, I mean white feminists of the sort I'm bitching about and their surrogates not say, the cool NY Feminists for Peace and countless others who really schooled me and helped me become a woman that could find her own way. While Hillary surely has my empathy while she suffers the violence of the nasty Beat the Bitch movement, she also inflicts her own brand of violence. It makes no sense for me to entertain any argumentation about the woes of Hillary's struggles with sexism that does not critically engage her (recent) willful acquiescence to a viewer who called into the debate to scapegoat immigrants, to say nothing of the debacles of Nevada-South Carolina that we saw. I think I would be a bad mother to my son if I didn't twist my insides, complicate my sentences and daily, daily, give myself headaches, to avoide the easy answers, to find a path of good conscience, to find an independent voice that is really free to choose, and really think this shit through; we cannot afford to be bamboozled.

Chris Brown Waved at Me

2008-01-18T09:51:00.000-08:00

Last night I took my son to his first live concert at Madison Square Garden. Below is my day late version of live blogging the event. I wanted though to preface that with some remarks about the serious impact of what I saw. And what I saw where city kids, kids from the city, disproportionately black and latino—and never are they over represented that way. But they were, they owned MSG and the overwhelming number of white girls from the other islands and NJ did not matter: this was not a Justin Timberlake concert. The children aged 3 to whatever were full of joy and movement and dance and themselves. And this was their party, the highlight of their year or month or maybe 7 year old life. And they were in a cultural festival, they partook in an exchange, you know with each other and their heritage. There I said it. The codes were out—the clothes, the dances, the songs. Yes other people know it because it is a worldwide phenomenon but you would be remiss if you were there last night and did not understand that these city kids were letting you know THIS IS THEIR FUCKING SHIT you loving and dancing to; comes from them and is in the world, for them. They were beautiful.

Chris Brown Waved At Me

On the 1 train uptown almost midnight. Our feet and legs hurt. In my
case my shoulders hurt because for two songs he was sitting on them. I
look over, he is still elated and mesmerized. I say,
"So I'm guessing this is up there in your top five best days of your
life, huh?
He replies immediately,
"It's number one."

And so my son wrapped up his first ever live concert. Probably one of the
funnest concentration of urban youth ages 5 through 35 I have ever seen.
Man, these children want to/can/love to/live to DANCE. I mean they were
dancing from 6:30 to 11:30 PM. We got there at 7:30 found them dancing
already. Babies to teenagers, seriously: moves for days, all in unison
with whatever the dj was playing--to each song, a dance. And singing
every word. My son got right into it.

First we saw
Lil Mama: and her " lip gloss is poppin, lip gloss is cool"

Then Souljaboy cranked it and of course my son killed the dance.

Then Bow Wow came, as expected, "You ain't fresh azim Is!", etc. He
"addressed" rumors of a riff between he and Chris Brown. Said the haters
were hatin'. Little girl next to us said "he lying, they fought, he got
slammed das why he lyin''. Makes sense to me.

Then Omarion joined as a surprise.

(We interrupt this report to express distress at Omarion and Bow Wow's
height. Bow Wow is oh, roughly My son's size. As far as Omarion, well he
has REALLY hit the gym, BUT 1. he is still Bow Wow's height and 2. his
lower body does not respond to the 1,000 push ups a day he's been doing.
So, with an upper body that belongs to a 185 lb athletic 6 footer
mounted on essentially My son's legs, while wearing (very Kanyesque)
skinny jeans , our boy Omarion looked like a hot air balloon that's got
an Icebox Where His Heart Used To Be.)

The too long intermissions between acts were made better by the fact
that FUNK MASTER FLEX himself was spinning said intermissions. This
was the part where I realized: we parents were essentially "at the
club" with our children and this to us was the better part of the
evening because most of us probably don't go to the club much anymore...
Some of us were even drinking. Our kids were amused and mortified. Then
they would relax because other people's parents were clearly more
embarrassing than their own. I *may* have done the Souljaboy but the mom
behind me was singing Lil Wayne's verse on Pop Bottles:
Poor it on the models, shut up bitch swallow
If you cant swallow, shut up bitch gargle

Then the stage went black and a clock appeared counting down from 4
minutes. Yeah, you heard me, 4 minutes, hormones-galore. Usually one
counts down 10 seconds but in Chris Brownland you count down 60 seconds
as loud as you can, dammit. My son was screaming so loud that by the
time we got to 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 --I thought his ears would pop OR
he would pee on himself, or both.

And then, pyroboomexplosion, hanging on wires suspended landing on
stage: Chris Brown!!!!

My son looked at him (we were extremely close) then at me and in disbelief asked, "Is that REALLY him ?" Yes it is, I said. Then I thought, "my, how he's grown" (ahem).
He opened with Wall to Wall and off he was on his super pop idol
extravaganza.

After a few songs on the main stage, he appeared in a second stage
which was (JACKPOT!) no more than 12 feet or less from us, set literally
in the middle of our seating area. My son freaked out, got on my
shoulders promptly (ouch), so he could wave at CB. He said CB waved
back at him. I am not sure that's true but I am sure that telling him it
wasn't really "at him" CB was waving is like saying Elmo is not real and
I'm not making that mistake again... All I remember is that CB was
close enough that I could see light sparkling on individual sweat drops
on that dulce de leche candy manchild torso of his while he faked sexual
intercourse on a moving round stage. "woah...ok", said I, more loudly
than I intended. "I know girl, I KNOW" said one of the other moms.

For most of the show, my son was singing along and bouncing and bopping
his head and throwin his hands up, keeping his baby-gangsta-stuntin cool
demeanor. But at Kiss Kiss he totally LOST HIS SHIT and started doing
"his" Chris Brown dances--much to the delight of all around him.
Nobody who knows my son but has not seen this before can picture it;
nothing my son does usually prepares you for what THAT SHIT looks like.
Hi.la.ri.ous.

And then, the real P. DITTY came out to rock the crowd and say hello
and tell us how "proud" of CB he is. He also did All About the Benjamins
and Last Night. He walked past us on the exit shaking hands--he is a
very shinny good looking good smelling man in real life. My son could
care less.

Things were wrapping up I thought, when my son asked me (I was distracted
by the fact that Lil Mamma and her dancers were a few rows up wearing
the best clothes ever), Why is everyone screaming at the guy in the
green hoodie on stage ?, so I look up and... THAT IS MOTHERFUCKING 50
CENT. And it was, so my son re-assumed his baby gangsta face and with
proper gravitas, bounced and chanted "I run New York!"

Generational gap: when the slow sing along of WITH YOU came on, Chris
Brown said "lemme see all those cell phones light up the room" And ALL
the children had phones and nobody had lighters.

Racebit: Heart Broken & On Sleeve

2008-01-15T21:23:00.000-08:00

I don’t know that anybody that is white in America knows this feeling—and I say this with pause because I am not comfortable making such statements generally because intellectually I know, they’re as plausible as guarantees about the after-life. Truth is, there’s no telling what the invidual human being will experience. Suffice to say that it is often the case, in America, that white people don’t have this feeling. History made that the case. Just as it made it the case that it’s likely that we will have this feeling.

You know, I am not a native born citizen. My citizenship is a few months old in fact. My immigrantship is more robust, going on 15 yrs. Much is written and said about the specificity of race in America. I would go further and say that for much of my intent and purposes in life, race was invented in America. Was and is every day. And so in my stay here, a huge component of who I came to be as an adult was “made in America”—this country taught me race, taught me I was black.

And it did so incompletely—as it often does for those like me, who despite appearing to be as black as the next black person and often more geographically black if you want to evoke African origin---have a pre-existing understanding of themselves that belies the way this country teaches you about race. I wouldn’t dare enumerate the ways in which my experience of myself often appears to be to be very distinct from that of black Americans (and mine is not the sole black ethnic specificity that would recognize its distinctions from a inherently very diverse black American experience either). Simply stated, "I'm black too" but it’s not the same in many ways. But it is the same in one crucial respect and to me, that is this feeling. The feeling of becoming simultaneously invisible and calcified into an identity that has nothing to do with the human being that you are. It is surreal in the sense that you are not made to be able to process its incongruence and in the sense that it is literally above the reality--if you want to hold on to the notion that you, yourself, are real.

The very first time you experience that feeling—that very American feeling—it comes without fanfare, perhaps to highest cruelty. It comes at work or at school or in an intimate moment you thought was a confessional with a friend—you are there and you are yourself and you realize, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that all that you are doesn’t rise up and drown a pre-existing idea that has been had of you, all along. A question like "do you think these statements were purposely intended to marginalize you as 'the black candidate?" is asked and there you are, a foregone conclusion pretending to be a real interlocutor. There is no explaining the little tragedy that unfolds in that moment. And not only do you recognize when it happens to you, but you have the added violence of watching it happen to others routinely, in that way that only those who have seen something, can see something. That feeling to me, is racism, if ever it was worth trying to quantify it that way.

I think this week of race-baiting identity politics in the campaign brought me squarely into that feeling. It was in part the dirty politics of race that seemed to get the best of the discussion on blogs, best of Obama’s people, best of me, even. I mean I could barely believe when I realized, reading shit at work, like comments by the head of BET or Charlie Rangel, that my feelings were hurt. "Feelings?", I thought? "When did I get so sensitive? What are my feelings doing anywhere near the NY Times online anyways?". But mostly it was the fact that at the end of the day, or rather, in this case, at the very beginning of the debate, Obama could not escape being encapsulated, entrapped, eventually declawed. He had not done so himself, not in the campaign and not in the recent days. He had not gone there and on the record that is not his rhetoric. And yet, there he was, being put to insistent formulations of The Race Question.

The real sad irony is that in that context, the person who slung race around, and self-congratulatedly mentioned the “black-browns” ad nauseum was Hillary, of course. Because a good, solid, self-satisfied white liberal who (to hear some tell it) has a “track record” of “service” on behalf of said “black-browns” is completely comfortable tossing race around. She even showed off her street cred by being comfortable saying bullshit like “I’m actually sad we didn’t get to more black-brown issues.” She could say that in this debate over and over again. If he had done that, he would be considered polarizing or militant or narrow minded, or God forbid, “like Al Sharpton”. If he had spoken in that voice—not that he would want to—he’d lose all his appeal as the crossover man of change. If he didn't, as he didn't, he would sit there and take it and lose God only knows how much. And to watch a grown man, an accomplished man, in the heat of such a historical moment that’s also such a heady personal moment, have to be diminished in this way was, frankly, infuriating and painful at the same time. It made me miss the early nineties, when I had just moved here and didn’t really give a shit about this place except for thinking it was a fascinatingly dysfunctional social experiment on crack.

Watching him tonight broke my heart; brought me to that feeling. Not only is the feeling difficult to fully express or explain, as is made clear by this rambling, it also makes the very idea of coherence tenuous. Racism—in a nutshell, is this: you become an incoherence to yourself and there is nothing you can do about it. The feeling of having your hand forced, but in a deeply personal, subjective, spiritual way, despite what you say, what you mean and what you intend, is truly uniquely devastating. And I'll concede, if there's a stench of "righteous indignation" here, well, the air is contaminated, so it is only right it should stink.

Bullshit Meter Level Higher

2008-01-11T12:46:00.000-08:00

GLORIA STEINEM MAKES ME CRAZY. She wrote what I am sure many thought was a great column in the NY Times. Myself, I had to shoot off a "comment" right away but still disatisfied, I decided to insert my own comments into her text in CAPS. This is something therapeutic that I do when the reality of life does not allow me to say, call Gloria Steinem and tell her this shit myself. Nothing like a CLASSIC white feminist throwback moment to get me going like it's college, I'm 20, and I'm fucking pissed off. So again, below it's her, except when it's CAPS and actually making sense.

Women Are Never Front-Runners
The woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father - in this race-conscious country, she is considered black - she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity.

Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?

If you answered no to either question, you're not alone. Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy.

FIRST OF ALL GLORIA STEINEM, DO YOU REALIZE IT'S A BIT OFFENSIVE FOR US REAL BLACK WOMEN OF COMPETENCE THAT YOU HAVE TO "INVENT" US FOR RHETORICAL PURPOSES? MAYBE TALKING TO REAL VERSIONS WOULD ELUCIDATE MUCH FOR YOU. FOR INSTANCE ABOUT HOW ALL THE ANALYSIS THAT YOU PRODUCE FALLS FLAT ON THE FACE OF MOST PEOPLE ON THE PLANET WHO ARE WOMEN AND HAPPEN TO NOT BE WHITE...

BUT ANYWAY, UNLIKELY THAT YOUR FEMALE OBAMA WOULD GET AHEAD? MAYBE. IT WAS CERTAINLY UNLIKELY THAT OBAMA HIMSELF WOULD BE WHERE HE IS, BUT YOU DON'T LIKE ADMITTING THAT, FINE.

TO ENGAGE YOUR DUMBASS HYPOTHETICAL, OK: THE HANDICAP A BLACK WOMAN HAS IS NOT THAT SHE IS A WOMAN. THE WOMAN YOU DESCRIBE WOULD BE HINDERED BY THE FACT THAT SHE IS A "BLACK WOMAN" IN AMERICA--YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT, A TWO WORD IDENTITY THAT YOU CAN'T PULL APART. CAN YA DIG IT? WE CERTAINLY CAN AND (DAMMIT) WE'VE BEEN TRYING TO EXPLAIN THIS SHIT TO YOU FOR OVER 30 YEARS...

That's why the Iowa primary was following our historical pattern of making change. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter).

"AND GENERALLY HAVE ASCENDED TO POSITIONS OF POWER"--WOW SUCH COMPELLING STATISTICS, WON'T EVEN DIGNIFY THEM. ABOUT THE HISTORY LESSON: YOUR FOREMOTHERS FELT REALLY UPSET, NOT THAT BLACK MEN WERE GIVEN THE VOTE BEFORE "WOMEN OF ANY RACE" BUT BEFORE *THEMSELVES*--THAT'S WHAT THE STAKES WERE. WHITE WOMEN OF POWER AND PRIVILEGE IN A RACIST SLAVE CULTURE THAT THEY WERE, THEY WERE NONE TOO PLEASED. DON'T YOU SIT HERE AND MAKE SHIT UP. AGAIN, WE'VE HAD THIS CONVERSATION WITH YOU ALL BEFORE. OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

If the lawyer described above had been just as charismatic but named, say, Achola Obama instead of Barack Obama, her goose would have been cooked long ago. Indeed, neither she nor Hillary Clinton could have used Mr. Obama's public style - or Bill Clinton's either - without being considered too emotional by Washington pundits.

OH, ACHOLA--WELL SHE HAS A NAME THEN!

TOO EMOTIONAL--WACHU TALKIN BOUT WILLIS? THE SAME RULES DON'T APPLY! IF YOU WANT TO GET INTO THE AESTHETICS OF WHAT OBAMA IS DOING, OR WHAT BILL CLINTON DOES ANY CHANCE HE GETS, THAT'S A BLACK THING. (WELL THINK ABOUT IT, DIDN'T WE ALL JOKE THAT HE WAS THE FIRST "BLACK" PRESIDENT?) YOUR ACHOLA WOULD HAVE BEEN RIGHT AT HOME CALLING UPON THE RHETORICAL ORAL TRADITIONS THAT OBAMA EMPLOYS AND BILL CLINTON AND MANY OTHER AMERICAN LEADERS EMPLOY FROM BLACK LIFE AND THE BLACK CHURCH.

So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one?
SAYS WHO, STEINEM? DON IMUS'S NAPPY HEADED HOES?

The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; AS RACISM *ONCE* WAS?!!???!!! IS THIS REALLY BEING SPOKEN IN A COUNTRY WHERE WE'D RATHER INCARCERATE HALF A MILLION BLACK BOYS THAN PUT THEM IN SCHOOL? WHERE IN SCHOOLS WHERE CHILDREN OF COLOR ARE THE MAJORITY AN AVERAGE 60 PERCENT OR MORE ARE BELOW GRADE LEVEL? YOU'RE TELLING ME WE DON'T STILL THINK RACE IS NATURE, RACE IS DESTINY, RACE MAKES PEOPLE FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT IN THE PSYCHE OF THE AVERAGE AMERICAN?

because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects "only" the female half of the human race;
UNLESS OF COURSE SAID MALES ARE SAY,"BLACK MEN AGES 18 TO 24"
AND SAID FEMALES ARE SAY, "WHITE FEMALE TOURIST MISSING IN ARUBA", I GUESS.

because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more "masculine" for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren't too many of them); WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT AND WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ? NOW YOU JUST SOUND DOWNRIGHT DELUSIONAL

and because there is still no "right" way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what. WELL I DON'T KNOW THAT THAT'S TRUE SISTER, BUT I KNOW THAT ALL THE PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR THE WAR IN IRAQ *ARE* BITCHES, YES.

I'm not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. YES YOU ARE. IN FACT YOU HAVE FOR AS LONG AS YOU AND OTHERS LIKE YOU HAVE SOUGHT TO REPRESENT AND CO-OPT A MOVEMENT TO LIBERATE "WOMEN" WHILE PERSISTENTLY PRETENDING TO NOT HAVE OPPRESSED SCORES OF WOMEN IN TANDEM WITH THOSE MEN WHO OPPRESSED YOU AND PRETENDING THAT IN YOUR SPECIFICITY YOU WERE IN FACT CAPABLE OF SOME UNIVERSALITY OF EXPERIENCE. YOU'VE NOT ONLY ADVOCATED THIS COMPETITION, YOU HAVE HAD IT WITH NONWHITE MEN IN FACT, MUCH TO THE DETRIMENT OF NONWHITE WOMEN WHO HAVE DEALT WITH BOTH YALL'S BULLSHIT FOR QUITE.SOME.TIME. HENCE: CONDOLEEZA RICE'S MAJOR AND OBVIOUS CHIP ON HER SHOULDER...

The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. That's why Senators Clinton and Obama have to be careful not to let a healthy debate turn into the kind of hostility that the news media love. Both will need a coalition of outsiders to win a general election. AND YET, IN THIS MOMENT HERE AS IN ALL THE HISTORY BEFORE IT, YOUR SENTIMENT SURE DOES NOT CALL ME TO COALESCE.

The abolition and suffrage movements progressed when united and were damaged by division; we should remember that. OH WE DO, AND WE ALWAYS HAVE.

I'm supporting Senator Clinton because like Senator Obama she has community organizing experience, SO?

but she also has more years in the Senate, I'M SURE IF HE COULD HAVE GOTTEN THERE SOONER, HE WOULD HAVE--SORRY!

unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House,
"ON THE JOB" TRAINING? AND YET SAID IS AN EXPERIENCE WHICH IF ANYONE FINDS FAULT WITH THEY ARE A SEXIST PIG--THEN YOU SAY WANT A HEALTHY DEBATE?

no masculinity to prove, UH, ACTUALLY, THAT WHOLE IRAQ THING WAS ABOUT PROVING HER MASCULINITY, IF YOU WILL--THAT'S HOW PROBLEMATIC SHE IN FACT IS.

the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country's talent by her example, RIGHT, A WOMAN WHO JUST CLAWED HER WAY TO THE WHITE HOUSE ALL ON HER OWN MARITAL MERIT: AFTER MY OWN HEART!

and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule.
FIRST OF ALL, SHE DID NOT BREAK THE RULE, SHE DIDN'T ACTUALLY CRY--NOR WOULD SHE EVER BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE TOO MUCH OFF THE CALCULATED EFFORT THAT IT WAS.

I'm not opposing Mr. Obama; if he's the nominee, I'll volunteer.
WOW, WHAT AN IMPASSIONATE ENDORSEMENT--THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Indeed, if you look at votes during their two-year overlap in the Senate, they were the same more than 90 percent of the time. POINT THEREFORE BEING HE'S JUST AS "CAPABLE" AS YOUR GIRL, NO?

Besides, to clean up the mess left by President Bush, we may need two terms of President Clinton and two of President Obama. OH SUCH QUAINT FEMINIST PRAGMATICS! OH I SEE, SO WE SHOULD LIKE, TAKE TURNS? YEAH? AND THE WHITE PERSON GOES FIRST? HOW RADICAL.

But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex. GASP! IT'S NOT THE LONG HISTORY BEHIND HER LAST NAME, IT'S NOT 20 YEARS OF PUBLIC LIFE AND SOME OF THE MOST CONTENTIOUS, NASTY POLITICAL TIMES IN RECENT HISTORY, IT'S NOT HER "VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY" POSITION, NOT HER OBVIOUS SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT THAT MAKES HER DIVISIVE?

What worries me is that she is accused of "playing the gender card" when citing the old boys' club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations. ARE YOU SAYING EVOKING THESE STRUGGLES IS BOGUS FOR BOTH OF THEM?
(I THINK TO BE QUITE CYNICAL, YOU ARE MAD THAT HE'S A BLACK MAN IN CONTROL OF HIS PERSONA IN A RACIST COUNTRY, WHILE SHE IS A WOMAN WHO IS UNABLE TO DO THE SAME VIS A VIS HER GENDER IN A SEXIST COUNTRY. BUT THAT'S CYNICAL AND I TAKE IT BACK).

What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn't. EVERY IOWA POLL HAD A DETAILED DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN, MEMBER? HE WON THE WOMEN VOTE BY 5 POINTS.

What worries me is that reporters ignore Mr. Obama's dependence on the old - for instance, the frequent campaign comparisons to John F. Kennedy
- while not challenging the slander that her progressive policies are part of the Washington status quo. OH MY GOD, THE LENGTH OF THE BULLSHIT PEOPLE WILL ENGAGE ON THIS...

What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.
TO SAY THAT BEING FOR HILLARY CLINTON'S POLITICS TODAY IS BEING "MORE RADICAL" IS BOGUS.

This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees.
FUCK WHAT IT CAN AFFORD GLORIA, IT'S WHAT IT DOES. EVERY DAY MY SON WAKES UP IN A COUNTRY THAT CHOOSES ALL POSITIONS OF POWER AND/OR SIMPLE RELEVANCE IN THE MOST MUNDANE AND ROUTINE WAYS (NOT JUST PRESIDENTS) BASED ON A PREDICTABLE CALCULUS OF SEX, RACE, CLASS, ETC. GIVEN HOW *SHE* CAME TO BE WHO SHE IS, I FIND *HIM* THE BETTER SLAP IN THE FACE OF THAT SYSTEM.

It's time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers.
FUCKING TAKE YOUR OWN ADVICE.

We have to be able to say: "I'm supporting her because she'll be a great president and because she's a woman."
NO, WE HAVE TO BE ABLE TO SAY AND IN FACT WE DO SAY: I AM SUPPORTING HIM BECAUSE HE IS GETTING YOUNG PEOPLE TO ENGAGE IN THEIR POLITICAL PROCESS, IS INTELLIGENT, THOUGHTFUL, COMMITTED, WORLDY, SINCERE, INFORMED, SELF-MADE AND HIS ARRIVING AT THIS MOMENT BOTH IMPRESSES AND INSPIRES AN ENTIRE COUNTRY. (AND LOOK MA!, I CAN SAY ALL THAT AND NOT MENTION RACE!)

Gloria Steinem is a co-founder of the Women's Media Center.
AND SHE IS FUCKING LAZY WITH HER THINKING.

Bullshit Meter Level High

2008-01-11T12:40:00.000-08:00

Though conceding that he is "articulate" (that word is back!) Karl Rove said of Obama that
"He is often lazy, given to misstatements and exaggerations and, when he doesn't know the answer, too ready to try to bluff his way through."

I say bring it on folks! Let's us have a race to see which on of you calls him "shiftless" first!

But seriously, when one thinks that Rove is the one who conspired and plotted to give us the President who:
--doesn't read
--doesn't watch the news
--doesn't stay up past 9 pm
--told the WMD in Iraq lies AND the torture is okay if we do it lies,
one does find Rove's comments *particularly* funny.

Incidentally: My son

2008-01-03T11:04:00.001-08:00

There are loves that are acts. Actions. Sweepings beginnings and endings. Most loves are that. The way that I love my son is all the other things, the fleeting and the soaring, the evoking and the leaving unfinishedly satisfied things. Questions that grow the mind, answers that scorch the eye for the truth in them. Instanteneous and eternal, about the smallest and the most infinite things; it's not something I could ever explain in terms of what it is. I only try to say here what it does. Loving my son is a spectular, recurring event that changes everything each single time.

Obama vs Edwards

2007-12-19T13:49:00.000-08:00

Paul Krugman writes about the Edwards-Obama difference that whereas Edwards is a true populist, Obama is naïve to think he can work out Hope and Change while sitting at the table with Big Pharma and Big Oil and Big Money. And it got me thinking.

This ultimate Obama criticism is what fuels John Edwards ideas for me—what makes him, funny hair fetish or not, a more left leaning option than my dear Obama. That is, if you believe John Edwards is sincere, which sadly, I don’t. I’ll take Obama’s centrist leanings over Edwards’s newfound populism any day, because well, I think the former’s sincere and the latter’s uh, shady. But that’s neither here nor there. I also prefer Obama’s position—that the idea you can work out healthcare by totally ignoring and shutting out Insurance and Drug Comps is nonsense—not because it suits my politics (it doesn’t at all) but because it suits what I think is reality.

The political environment is contaminated, it is completely rigged, at the most fundamental “meaning-making” level. I’m not going to get all Marxist here except in the most rudimentary way, but the idea of a really informed population is only half the battle. You still need the other half: a full range of meanings to choose to make. Something's weird when lots of people can live in squalor or nearly, can be bereft of so much, can live a life of want dead smack in the middle of plenty, and not find an extreme left political leaning bone in their bodies. They can’t derive the most obvious political conclusion from a life of experiences that seem to scream, if not Edwards certainly, well, Dennis Kucinich!

That’s weird. It’s just strange. (I mean, it’s only weird and strange if you don’t do the rudimentary Marx because if you do, it makes plenty sense).That there isn't a solid extreme left, or solid social democratic, lively, active population in this American reality sort of makes the landscape surreal. Except it is very real. The idea that this kind of a properly leftist message doesn’t thrive is a few steps ahead of the tragic reality that the message doesn’t even really arise. Politically, the population is scripted into predetermined ideas about viability. People say, Dennis Kucinich “is just not viable”. Even my all time favorite person Sean Penn is adamant that it is not the case because “we” get to decide that—he supports Dennis and I love him for that. But really Sean, no we don't get to decide. Because Dennis (and that sort of a message) can't get enough money to run a viable campaign. It’s a capitalist chicken and egg type of question. Do we *think* he is not viable cause he is TOO left, in fact? Or do we think that because never has someone with his profile gained enough legitimacy—that is, had enough money to gain said legitimacy—to make the message real?

He—and what he represents--is not viable because the big money that funds candidates will never allow say, a socialist (give and take) to run with any “legitimacy” or “viability”. Because big money and socialism don't work. It's not just in presidential campaigns that people don't understand where their interests lie, it’s EVERYWHERE. Not in education, not in media, not in "real life", nowhere. Nowhere do people really really really fundamentally believe that their human rights trump the right of the next man to profit. And that my friends, is capitalism not as economical system, but as way of life—that is what America is, if anything is what America is.
To an extent, it's not about 2008 election, or the ones before. This is about hundreds of years of that way of life, of the character of a place being sketched out with a particular slant. It’s about the soul of a nation being an emanation of its being the persistently most robust, free market, capitalist operation on the planet. That operation has thrived on a certain political structure. A fundamental historical, social and political chassis to think of an apt car analogy. Whatever moment we live in is simply the latest make and model of the car that goes on top of the chassis. But the fundamental nuts and bolts, they stay the same. It is what the country is and that structure is the structure within which a President of the country operates. And I don’t think I overestimate Obama to say that’s exactly what he is thinking about when he concedes, quite honestly, that much as he’d like to, he won’t be able to go all FDR on some pharmaceutical and insurance companies.

FDR was not FDR because he was the John Edwards or even the Dennis Kucinich of his time. FDR was FDR because to be simplistic, “shit was that fucked up.” Shit was that fucked for enough important people. You know what, shit was SO fucked up, it was fucked up for corporations and big money. When chaos is visited upon them, when the car crashes so badly that not only the body and passengers are annihilated but the actual chassis is destroyed, then yeah, you’re allowed a trip back to the drawing board and you can present new plans and re-engineer. But even still, only for a while until the old smell gets back in everyone’s nostrils and just like that, we want things back that way they were—when money was being made at rates and in ways uncountable. This is what normalcy in this country feels and looks like.

Part of the problem to me is precisely is about plenty and wealth and sheer scale. As much trouble as the country’s in, it’s not in a Depression of that scale. Too much wealth and space makes it very hard to feel completely overwhelmed, to congeal in a state of panic nationally and feel together, at once, oh boy, we’re headed in a fucked up direction. Chaos can give you an FDR, you know, but we're not there. Rather, we don’t think we are at chaos yet, which considering 9/11, global poverty, the environment and domestic statistics about health, children and education (to name a few), is again surreal. Why don’t we think “shit is that fucked up”?! The meaning-making processes are fully compromised and contaminated, that’s why.

Sure the so called middle class is feeling it, and just from their malaise (as well as that of the aging boomers) we see rumblings of a more progressive agenda. They are just rumblings as long as the economy, that Super Citizen, is thriving. But even to get these rumblings, look what it took, in terms of our analogy of the car: look how many massive crashings of the car, from Reagan through the Clinton centrist years to the Bush times, before we even asked a question.

Let’s get Obama-esque though, let’s get practical. Even while cavorting with Big Money, playing with a rigged deck, could we do better? Sure, and I think that's what Obama thinks he can do--make "better" deals with the devil. I believe he'll try because I think he understands that those corporations can give some leeway and still make out okay. He knows that while things like NAFTA don't have to happen under him, for instance, he is fully aware that the forces behind things "such as" NAFTA will continue to pressure his government. And some of what they want will have to pass. His job is about how much of that some passes. I don’t think that’s the job he’d like to have, but I think he understands that is what it will be.
I think Obama understands what country he’s gearing up to run, what it’s made of, what it’s ultimately about. Maybe it’s the what did they say?, voluntary immigrant acumen in his DNA that gives him that unsentimentality of scope. I think he understands (and I don't mean this tragically or pessimistically) that this government has to be an Asshole Govt to a large extent in order to support this Way of Life. But he knows it doesn't have to be As Big An Asshole as it's been. Obama would curb the Asshole quotient but doesn’t pretend he’d do away with it, I think. Edwards wants to pretend the Asshole can be Nice Guy Who Says Screw You to Big Money, and I think nonsense. Edwards knows this and the reason he knows this is because this is his second presidential bid. You don’t get that far ahead not knowing shit. Just like you don’t get to be 31 years old and live in the States 16 years not knowing shit.

A Savior Is Born

2007-12-19T07:04:00.000-08:00

No, no, not THAT one. The soon to be born child of Jamie Lynn Spears. A savior: the only person who could make Britney Spears look like the better sister. At least her babies were born in wedlock, right? Were they? Well if not that, then at least she wasn’t 12. Uh, I mean, 16. This story is cracking me up. I don’t think it’s tragic because a) they don't seem to themselves--they told the story to OK! magazine; b)my mother had me when she was 16 and though rough waters were waded through, I’m fabulously here to tell about it and c) Grandma Spears is rich and can raise all those babies. She would anyway because that is what happens (where we come from you know, myself and the Spears and countless others!) but at least she can have three nannies if she wants to, and her own compound.

Time and time again, it’s always the church going God-fearing public that overestimates its ability to keep the panties up and ends up spread eagle and condom free on some old, “I just never thought it could happen to me.” Ah, kids.

Of course my biggest issue is WHAT AM I GONNA TELL MY SON? Zoe 101 kind of like, is a little ho and lost her job?

Best thing about the story is not that the Spears saw fit to let their child cohabitate with her boyfriend soon to be baby daddy. Best thing is that said boy is mentioned as her “long time boyfriend”—that means what? They started dating in 4 or 5th grade?

made in new york

2007-12-02T22:27:00.000-08:00

After my son goes to sleep I get a few quiet hours and despite what they sometimes bring, I relish them because the life of a mother is very loud, very full, very outside of herself and I need to find my way back inside myself. Especially now. So he goes down and I turn off all the lights except of the room I am in. Increasingly that means pitch darkness other than the glare of the computer monitor, because I am writing or reading or less proudly, watching everything I can possibly think of watching on YouTube. I never know what kind of night it’s going to be. Maybe I’ll write something about my son that gets birthed from the deepest best places inside and soars up, the way stories about him do, and saves the day and my mood. Maybe I’ll happen upon another of my “biographical notes” moods and write that, for better or worse. Maybe I’ll just thrill myself excavating musical memories on Itunes—spending a fortune getting songs I’ll be too embarrassed to play to people. Maybe I’ll read the latest magazines I’ve been piling up and plot my next (likely to be failed) workout diet regimen. But maybe just maybe none of that will happen and I will be like I am right now--overtaken by the feeling of absolute loneliness and abandonment. I wanted to, as I was writing, call it other things and make it less pathetic. Because I do feel pathetic saying that this is how I feel: abandoned and left behind. In some massive, fundamental, any way I cut it way. Left behind. It’s a feeling that is enormous and no less so for my knowing it is partly delusional… I think when you suffer this much for the loss of a place that wasn’t even a good place for you, the loss of someone who sold you out so many times, I think that fucks you up more. Because it tells you something you don’t really want to know about yourself. But this is me tonight, just wishing I were not alone in this whole mess. If my life is an occasion well I am not rising to it—that’s the feeling. It is dark and the snowing went into raining so you hear the time pacing in the sound of the tires of cars—it frames the endless silence. I know this whole thing, including these lonely panics, are The Whole Point. I know this is the fight for the life, for the good life—I’ve been here before enough to know it, I can smell it. As much as I wish someone were here, I know better; I know that would be as good as putting a gun to my head, spirit wise. And I’ve done enough of self-erasure for a lifetime. It’s just about filling in my blanks and not filling them up with someone else’s bullshit for a change. What was that cliché they said on that HBO show? That it was dedicated to the people “who have the courage to be happy.” I don’t have it, the courage, or the faith or (and this troubles me most) the inspiration. I am terrified because I don’t have these things and I wish I had someone right here to tell me it was going to be okay. But fact is, when I did, he was lying and it wasn’t okay in the end—it was the worse possible way things could be. So hey, it’s dark and cold and quiet in my apartment but I am here. Typing away. Feeling sorry for myself and saying so. Crying and staying up all nights and having trouble getting up on time. Scared shitless but showing up every day. And I’m going to hope I don’t disappoint myself after all the disappointments they have caused me. I am not going to abandon and leave myself behind. Nobody is here to tell me it’s going to be okay, because that’s not something said. That is something made. I am going to make it.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-20T09:17:00.000-08:00

This link should take you to a TIME mag photo essay entitled

WHAT THE WORLD EATS, PART 1.

It shows a series of families around the world sitting around the amount of food they consume in a week, with the cost indicated. It ranges from $300 in some instances to a bit over a dollar in others...

If it's about Thanksgiving then I thought this was appropriate to post when my friend who works on Africa sent it to me--thanks A!

Biographical Notes Four

2007-11-16T13:48:00.001-08:00

(This exists in my mind half-dream like in the sense that it is all very vivid but my sense of time, is not so much. What it does have though, is this untamable ability to make me really feel viscerally. A range of things. A panic and a dread. But usually a deep sense of my own joy and laugher and freedom in this crazy time of what, in retrospect turned out to be a strange & traumatic childhood). When we were living in Louvain-La-Neuve or LLN, Belgium, my parents were broke college students. Some of the behavior would appear to me to be vagabond like, but in a good way. For instance, my dad made us both “sleds” that were essentially garbage bags, the heavy duty black ones. I didn’t care about the other kids having the wooden fancy—read: real—ones because mine sped way faster. In fact we sped into a park bench once and that hurt. My parents would often check out the garbage dumpster for stuff that people threw away and bring it home. This was a very neat (francophone?) garbage dumpster enclosed by cement, where along the sides you had the huge bins of trash proper but then all over you’d have what looked like a Salvation Army floor or a good old American yard sale. I remember three choice items for my bedroom: a hugely fabulous desk that I could literally, lay on top off, which I did, to feign flight in my adventures (I will return to these adventures another time), a fantastic metal bunk bed painted orange and a mini navy blue leather arm chair. Together looking back on it, it all suggests a 1970’s Howard Johnson’s Motel room. Those items furnished my bedroom in the second apartment, number 41, where I did have a space that we called a bedroom although it was more like the walking around space in the top of the duplex studio situation.

LLN was a pedestrians only city, and propped above an underground network of parking lots. You could drive into the underground and then literally, had to park the car and go up the stairs and conduct your life on two feet, or a bike, or (and these were huge, I wanted one so bad) mopeds. Cars were sort of exotic for me. As were buses, but we took them to go into a “real” city with superstores where we’d get cheap groceries and carry them back on the bus, in my father’s Puma duffel bags. Cars buses and phones were exotic. We didn’t have a phone. The old university city of Louvain was beautiful and whimsical and historical and all the things that new Louvain (that’s english for Louvain-La-Neuve) was not. But for a kid, LLN was perfect—who wants to live in gothic european architecture when you can live in a Legoland city with an acronym for a name and where no cars are allowed? A Legoland full of university buildings—think the faculty the Sciences Po, Law, Medecine, etc—adjacent dormitories or student family housing, the necessary types of stores needed for living, a movie theatre where I very much made my home, a book store with a vast collection of BD’s (or bandes dessinees, or comics—but think Gaston LaGaffe and Comanche and oui, Tintin), where I also made my home. The bookstore-movie area was amazing. They were one above the other and I relished coordinating a schedule of daily activities around that area that started with going to the candy store across from the bookstore, usually to buy very little and steal very much. I was a bit of a delinquent in grades K to 3. I would steal the loose candy that you were supposed to buy by scooping it up and putting it in the baggies, that then you’d weigh. I was addicted to the gummy coca-cola bottles. Once furnished with my gummy-cola-crack snack, I would go into the bookstore to read entire collections of books I couldn’t afford to buy. I did get BDs and my parents collected as well but never at the rate they would come out. Also, in the bookstore I could sometimes read the adult comics with the graphic sex. Not always but sometimes. In the bookstore, the clerks used these plastic stools to access the top books on the shelves and these had wheels, so naturally, my hours there were spent on the stool, “driving” around the store and making reading pitstops. Once that was done, I would go up the stairs, over the overpass, and the back of my friend Yoenn’s building (actually) and into the movie theatre. The best part of LLN for me was this, the way it was build for me to own by my superhero powers of mapping. I could open a door and head down to the underground parking lots and promise you the exact address where I would come up. Every building seemed to have a connecting overpass or a back entrance or complicated connecting tunnels or something--that magically led out to a friend’s house or my favorite store. The movie theatre was special because Hatem’s dad worked there and before they moved back to Cairo—a devastating blow: this is the house where I learned that you could eat as many sunny side eggs as you wanted per meal without death and where I defiled Hatem’s religion by sneaking him some salami and bacon on occasion so he could taste some pork--he used to let us sneak in for free. One day we watched a a m movie based on our favorite BD, Lucky Luke, all day, by hiding under the seats after the end of each show and coming up at the start of the next one; we got a headache. Sometimes I snuck in to see movies I was not allowed to see at my age, though not often. I vividly remember doing that for Gandhi and later A Passage To India. Yeah that really does work on you in 2nd and 3rd grade. Gandhi I fell in love with, A Passage was very haunting viewing, obviously. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom—though ostensibly unrelated, and age appropriate, in my experience very much related. I put all those together in my head and determined that a once lush and beautiful place, India, had totally been fucked over by the (nasty) british colonialists, which was not surprising to me. About Passage I remember this strangeness of completely understanding instinctively what the fuck was going on and how fucked up these people were and then allowing myself to maybe not understand the full detail? Or having a sense of the depth of it that was yet still a bit beyond me although it probably wasn’t by that age. This time is drenched in that density of knowing too much—certainly life with my mother was always that way. Always invasively prying my eyes open to things I was not ready to see. I don’t have a sense, real or not, of anything I did not “know of” by 3rd grade—you know, of the things people wait to tell children about? Sex, death, drugs, whores, pimps, and junkies, blood, tears, and of course Jesus. The miniseries Jesus of Nazareth occupies a huge space because as I have mentioned I became strangely terrified and attracted to Jesus at the same time. In adolescence this vibe repeated itself with films about Satan, ironically. But in this time it was JC. When I watch that film now, it’s apparent why that the face of that actor does inspire equal parts fear and devotion though. It is also apparent that their idea of how to make Laurence Olivier appear to be from Judeia was putting eye liner on him—this made me thing they did not have color contacts in the early 80s right? I also famously walked into a lot of inappropriate cinema playing on our little 1970’s black and white TV set and for many many years thought the Deer Hunter russian roulette scene was a b&w situation.

It’s only parenthetically depressing that perhaps all this is so vivid in part because it’s trauma or because it was experienced partially traumatically. I can run a mental picture in my mind of my epic bike rides that I would map out, ever more (to me then) adventurously, (to me now) dangerously nihilistically—hours and hours of biking further and further away from the center of town and pushing the time to come back and playing catch with the sun going down with the temperature. My little bike had this pedal fueled headlight and I remember the way that by he time I made it back, the sound of the pedal fuel thing would be slowing down, my throat would be dry, my body would cold, and I would be exhilerated but sad about night coming. The ride I have done in my mind, after the fact of it, all my life. I start right on the front lawn and head as far as I can that way along the train tracks to Bruyere, then cross then back around there, that part is a bit dark and under the trees so race past there, watch the wet leaves because they make me slip, come out by the side of the Ferme du Biereau , then from the farm into the schoolyard of my elementary, the College, go under that overpass across the playground, past the windows to the cafeteria, come out on the other side facing the gym (let’s not talk about the teacher, who I only now realize was a Mega Lesbian Terror in tennis shorts and white headban, the first of many people who looked at me like I was a serial killer because I could not understand how I was supposed to do athletic stuff without being taught: I still don’t, I think it’s genetic discrimination to think every kid’s gonna do a cartwheel without training). Across from that, the high school, Martin V, I think was its name. Then down the long hill heading down back to my neighborhood. I will let go of my hands and stir by just squeezing my thighs to make the bike lean and make the loop just so and I will not watch incoming bikes, and my tummy will drop. I will think how the hill is so fun going down, but not fun walking up cold alone in the mornings when everyone else is getting walked by their parents and I feel embarassed to be walking alone. I get to the Creperie, and down the stairs (motorcross style on my little bike!) to my door step. I will open the door and the house will be slightly toasty, the heat too high, the colors inside are orange-tinged. If she’s there there’s music and food smells. Maybe weed smoke if this is 1984. And I will wonder what mood she is in today and if she plans to go out tonight and leave me home alone in the night.

...

2007-10-21T19:56:00.000-07:00

my son came back from a good weekend with his dad and his girlfriend. except he came reporting about their moving from the girlfriend's apartment into his new apartment. he said to me something about papa's apartment and then added "and she is going to be living there too, they're the happy couple." and then i noticed he had paint in his hair; he said the three of them had been painting their new apartment. it's always the smallest things that come and pull the air out of the room, just like that, and flood the room with a sadness you swore you had run out of ll the way. but you find there's more leftover. and on the tail of the sadness invading, come its million questions, fundamental ones that seem to shake your bones. and ridiculous ones like, "after my ten years how is this family painting new apartment scene happening without me?".
but still, i know this is just an emotion that has to come and go, and not reality. reality is, I don't fucking give a fuck because I want better than that.

Lately I am moody with my grown up thoughts

2007-10-16T19:27:00.000-07:00

My son was talking to his father on the phone. His father was on
speaker...They were talking about shopping for winter clothes on
Friday. About looking good and funny things like that. His father said something about "being
fly". It wasn't serious. Then I heard my son saying something that if
it had not been followed by much more I would not have believed.

My son opens up to me easily but not to his father. The immensity of
their love and the strength of their bond seems untouched by that
distance and incapable of bridging it either. He idolizes and fears his father's disaproval in one smooth
emotion. He suffers from his father's immaturity and forgives it in
the same moment. I am very familiar with having that special resident
in your heart. It's not the love hate at that tender age so much, it's the
love hurt. He doesn't say confrontational things to him ever. But yet
I heard him say this:

You think we're both fly but I know that I am fly but I don't know why
you think you're fly.

I can't imagine what his father would say to that, I couldn't tell
from his mumbling. Then my son asked:

Well on a scale of 1 to 10, how mad would you be if I told you I
didn't think you were fly?

Three times his father asked him to repeat and clarify--a measure I
appreciated as I too could not believe my ears even while I typed on
my laptop all the little words... Three times my son enunciated this
question: on. a. scale. of. one. to. ten...

I am not sure what was said after that. But then my son moved on:

I think you think you're fly but I don't know why you think that
because your dad he quit being a dad and so you're not really fly but
you think you are. Me, I know I am. But you that's what happpened to
you.

All the "you"'s and all the "me"'s were very pronounced.
His father, after a long pause said,

So that's what you think, huh? That's interesting...

My son said quickly said:

No, that's what I think you think, what I think happened to you.

His father paused and mumbled again and said something about what a grown kid he was, then repeated
the words, what you think happened to me. And quickly wrapped up the
conversation in the usual loving manner that they do it.

I did wish at that time that he and I were in better
terms, speaking-wise, because no matter what, I know this was difficult.
And no matter what he allows himself to even contemplate, I know he is shocked by it and in normal
times we would debrief it together. As things are, he had it coming and these are not normal times.
He got his ass proverbially handed to him by our seven year old and I can't really be there for him.
These are not normal times at all.

My son came back to me a bit after the call and I asked him what that was all about and he
said--I know I have this right because I typed as he spoke:

Whats his dad's name again? Yeah him, well he quit being Papa's dad
and because his dad quit being his dad on him and wasn't fly so if
Papa thinks he's fly how could he think he was fly? He thinks he is
fly as a dad but he's not cause how could he know how to be? He thinks
he is but he's not . But me I am fly. I know that I am and the reason
that I am is because I am nice I am honest and do things right. And
that is really true, you know? I am honest and do things right.

I didn't really know what to say to him after that which was
okay because he quickly followed with:

And YOU, I have a very hard question for you, which I really hope you
can answer.

(I swallowed very hard and I braced myself for something painful, then I heard this, as if seemingly completely related):

If cats hate water so much, how come they drink it?

Living in a Break Up World

2007-10-15T06:53:00.000-07:00

My son gets all the serious talking done right when I send him to bed. One reason is that he gets thoughtful and contemplative once alone in bed. Another reason is that he loves an excuse to extend his time awake and cuddle up on the sofa and sneak a peak at grown up TV...Last night we discussed his father's new girlfriend again (I told him about it myself because his father would not, but his father would however, make him share a bed with this "friend" and make him spend his weekend with his father at this "friend's" house and bake his father's birthday cake and attend his father's birthday dinner with said "friend"; what a mighty mighty special friend that is!). We also discussed his frustrations with his father for not talking to him about issues and for making him share said bed. We agreed we would request the purchase of a sleeping bag for next weekend with Papa. He upgraded to "one of those air beds with a pump"; I agreed that is a feasible request.

Then he asked me if his father's having a new girlfriend meant he would have to switch moms. Because he really did not want to. It took a lot of invisible men handling me and strapping me down to with invisible chains to my chair to keep me from screaming and shaking him and saying WHAT THE FUCK EVER GAVE YOU THE FUCKING IDEA THAT I WOULD EVER EVER EVER EVER STOP BEING YOUR MOTHER, LET ALONE THAT THIS OBSCENE CHANGE WOULD HAPPEN ON OCCASION OF SWAPPING ME FOR YOUR FATHER'S NEW LITTLE FUC--you get the idea... Instead what happened was lots of very tight, very repetitive hugs and explanations and drawings of family trees...And conforting words like "no matter what" and "forever" and "ever" and "always" and "this changes nothing between you and I."

Then he asked me whether she was his stepmom and I said he should ask his father. I don't know frankly that this is a permament relationship and I don't want my son's emotional life turned into a circus for his father's benefit. I remember very acutely my mother force-feeding me her first boyfriend after their divorce, basically orchestrating my falling-in-love with the idea of a new father figure when the romance was so clearly volatile and short-lived. Instead of the one heartache and torture of losing my parents being together, I had that in close succession to the loss of a new so-called Parental figure, just because adults are sloppy. And selfish. So no kid, I don't know that she is your stepmom. But for now, how about she is a great friend?

And finally he (astutely) seemed to change topics into my making him a list, by dictation of things he prays to God for a lot but is "pretty sure [he's] not gonna get." It reads:
Things I Pray To God For But Am Pretty Sure I'm Not Gonna Get"
1. A watch like "Ben 10" that can make me transform into anything even fictional things.
2. Me being a member of the Venom family with my own special costume.
3. My parents being back together and me not living in a break up world.

"Happiness is only real when shared"

2007-10-05T23:00:00.000-07:00

Two am! It is very late and yet i have to take the time to say i just watched Into The Wild and it is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful experience. It has an immensity of life and love and resonance and emotional and human consequence. It shows an almost obscene amount of skill from Sean Penn as director-writer and from every actor, but as huge as that concrete quantity of talent is, it (willingly and happily) allows itself to be obfuscated by the feel of that film--the way it starts winking at you, nudges and triggers you to pull you in from out of your complacency (but without melodrama, no cheap shots), then takes you very slowly to the place where it just digs into you the way only real things do... Things like getting something or losing it or how you love; and who. It's not the kind of film though that I would dare go into detail talking about beyond this that I have (incoherently) said. I will instead go listen to that Eddie Vedder soundtrack immediately and quietly.

Vintage Seven Two Point O

2007-10-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

This is what I overheard. My son was on the phone with his uncle, updating him on a situation I was already informed about after school...

So you know how I told you I was going to tell Chelsea I love her? ... Well I did and guess what? She-she-she gave me a note with-a-heart-on-it yeah, yeah and it said I love you-and it had her phone number...Me, duh! I'm like dancing right now.

And he was, he was dancing while on the phone and was still dancing when he called his father immediately after to repeat the same.

Then he applied himself to make a note of his own, which stated, Chelsea, I love you too, Love me. And then had his phone number; read: my cell number.

Then he drew a heart and t hen a picture of two little aliens, well actually intended them to be kids, but given his drawing technique and poor fine motor skill, they looked like aliens holding hands. Heading said "you and me". Then he said, triumphant, "the picture really makes it like...a total love note."

Then he did one more happy dance. And said, "my first real girlfriend, can you believe it?"

And later at night he welled up again. He's been crying at nights, getting emotional over things he thinks and thinks about, some of which we discuss. Earlier this September it was massive growing pains, wanting to go back to first grade and being terrified of his challenges in school (he's still writing slowly and is just now getting to write legibly; the confidence is shaky at best) and the new Terrifying Teacher. And of course, Chelsea. But there was and is this other thing, like a sense of danger or precariousness that I can't quite pin down. A recent instance was when he asked me about whether the apartment was safe or we could get attacked by burglers like he saw on the news. Then he asked to call his dad about that little panic. Today he asked that we say a prayer--we did, it consists of him silently asking for stuff and then saying his Our Father out loud and me just reveling in the way his voice is getting thicker like a boy who just ate a baby though, something my mind calls baby raspy depth of voice, and can wrap around Lead Us Not Into Temptation. But he was clearly worried and then he said, again, almost in tears, or asked rather: "if something happened to you, you would call me right? like you would wake me up?"

It occurs to me that again, you can't forget, they are intuitive sponge-like little souls, they pick up the nuances and the subtleties of the space of the time, of the unsaid. So much so much is communicated to children through channels that are children-only access channels. I remember that clearly from my childhood but never keep it in mind enough, which I gather is a Universal Parental Sin. I'm going to guess that he feels a bit of what I feel, of the stresses of changes, again. We have had so many scenarios vis a vis his father, so many oh what to say, frequencies of relationship, schedules of appearances, disrupted patterns. We've had many apartments, many New Life Starting Today episodes. And by many I don't mean 20, I mean many. I feel battle-weary and I am 31, how the fuck did I think he would feel? For all my efforts and they are profound and thorough efforts to maintain a stability For Two in the face of all kinds of odds, it is still his life that he is left to live and sometimes it finds the nerve, it finds the cruelty of heart to kick his little seven year old ass like it would an adult. And I have to be here and just say so to him: it is not fair nor warranted when it is this hard.

When it's like this we talk, we do baby therapy I guess. I said to him that we'd be talking more about these "feelings" and that you know if he listed all the things he's got to worry about in his own seven year old life, he'd see he has no space or time left to worry about grown up things like whether something's gonna happen to me, and if it does, will I call him. I said, I'm the caretaker here, I'm the one whose job it is to worry. I said, your job is just (to improve that handwriting and reading and)to be happy--find a way always to be happy; that's what God wants from all kids. He said he promised to do so. I reminded him of his (our) way to vacate the mind so he can sleep when he gets like this. He has to close his eyes and watch himself breathe in and out only, "and if your mind starts thinking, tell it to stop and just watch." But before I said he should remember what he told me today after the phonecalls to everybody, telling them about the love note. Do you remember what you told Mama today, after you hung up from telling Papa about the note? He said, "Yes, I told you, I love being me."

He won't ever understand how much I too have had to hang on his every word to fall asleep at night...

On Drinking Alone

2007-10-02T06:10:00.000-07:00

What do you make of drinking alone? I picture myself in a black and white classic film, face half shaded, wearing a fedora cocked to the side, part Bacall part Bogart part Le Samourai, smoke bellowing out, eyes glossy, asking the question. But in this scene the question would be better, like:
What is wrong with drinking alone?

I tell you what is: nothing. Nothing at all is wrong with drinking alone. Except if you are me—a person discinclined for solitary contemplation. It has taken me 31 years and all the instances of the Bad Drunk—some accounted for on this very blog—to finally figure it out. I figured it out this morning when I, waking up from an outing of drinking alone, had to do the following:
--attempt to “Unsend” a drunk e-mail to no avail because it had been read already.
--check, with baited breath, the financial damage my lonely drunkeness had caused my ridiculousky tight monthly budget (I am someone’s mother; I can’t actually run out of funds on booze…)
--ask myself the question: why on Earth did you do that on a Monday night?

All things considered, it wasn’t such a bad aftermath, when damage was assessed: the money damage wasn’t so bad all things considered (I paid no rounds, I did not have 5 drinks, I did not order myself an expensive meal, I only was there 3 hours) and the drunk e-mail, for one, was an e-mail and not a drunk dial and content-wise, though it wasn’t my best moment, it wasn’t something that will prevent me from looking the person in the eye today. That said, I’m pretty sure I won’t have to look the person in the eye today… Which is good. So again, damage is sort of minimal. But to the substantive question: Why on Earth did you do that on a Monday night?

Oh, wow, I don’t know… Which is why I’m going to therapy. I’m all over the place, very restless, very persistently counterproductive: the scales steady and I feel balanced, and then I don’t. I resume going to the gym and feel wonderful for that, then I’m out drinking by myself. I find the loneliness peaceful, profoundly so, then I’m lonely in very profound way. Lonely even in a pathetic way, as in you know, the drinking alone way. This is not news but there’s a way that a swinging mood is more exhausting than a steadily gloomy one. Very much so. I seem to have developed a real swinging mood quality about myself of late. I know some obvious part of that is my impatience with the process of feeling something. I don’t quite know what that means and how one lets go and does that. I just know how to write everything and say everything and tell myself that having felt everything and thought everything through I am now done with everything and on to another thing. See, it’s tiring just saying it, but this I think, is how I know to live. And that requires a captive audience, no? That includes myself, a most discriminating, critical, audience member.

I think that’s to the point of why we’re social beings and without our linkages we don’t do well—well in certain specific cultural contexts, I mean, like ours. I think this is to the point of why solitary life is for monks and buddhists and people who really cultivate their inner knowledge and really dig in there and get to know themselves. The rest of us—well let me stop pontificating and just speak of myself. Myself I think I don’t do very welll left to my own devices to deal with a process of feeling something of magnitude. For all my talking, there’s a whole lot that’s just talking myself out of the ability to do the emotional equivalent of *not* going drinking alone. Which today all sounds very creepy to me, like maybe I am needy; I don’t think I am, I never thought I was, I would hate to find that I am. But maybe I am, even if momentarily, needy. And that would be bad timing on my part because I have needs that are on a long term suspended schedule. I will spare myself the listing of all the things I need and have needed and am not getting anytime soon… Point may be though, that maybe needy people should never drink alone. It’s a false pretense.

A Longwinded Toast

2007-09-18T09:35:00.000-07:00

I'm having this extended, extended, e-mail conversation with a friend of mine who is away in a foreign land. And we talk, by virtue of where we are in our lives, both physically space-wise (different continents) and otherwise, about the full range of things. The small sights he sees, the random thoughts I have but also the momentous things that happen to either of us that insert themselves into the course of the correspondence and thus must be acknowledged. It feels like a consistent thematic approach to life, first by distilling it to the bits worth corresponding about but then also by thinking in the spirit of this strand of extended conversation which has, not surprisingly, developed its own themes. Things like one’s place in the world, one’s emotional landscape, who you used to be versus who you become, and lately we’ve been on this trip about how you grow and why you grow. Or not. All of that further framed by the constrains or better parameters of this being someone I did not know a year ago. It’s a very cool sort of journey for all these reasons. But anyway--

So in connecting a book he was reading, a classic in fact, with my recent “watershed” moment of Sept 5, he brought to my attention how the book was full of this consideration for one’s intentions of growth, of development, of expansion of self. And it dealt with it in many ways including through insistingly using the word “dilate”: so people, mainly the heroine, either experience or consider dilation, in face of thoughts and experiences. So he put the word to me, the questions we entertained being around whether this is an apt metaphor for much of what’s obsessing us these days, when we correspond. And it is. This is about that, for me, this whole journey is about a sort of pre-cognizant internal visceral aspiration (and aspiration is a word that means breathing in all my other languages more than in english, and when you in portuguese aspire you dilate your lungs by filling them up with air)—so aspiration to a more expansive soul, a greater life, a greater place in the world or contribution to it (in the small sense of having a purposeful existence that fill you up, not in some sense of fame and fortune). And so many of my stories that I have told myself can be laced up under one rubric: how have I been made or remade bigger or smaller, how have I dilated or contracted, at the hands of significant people and events in my life.

He also pointed out that in my big moment the other day the conversation was directed or projected onto X but was really one I was having with myself. As my friend put it, it was an instance of me “calling myself out”, as much as anything else. And so I got to thinking about the motor that pushes one to do that when one had not done it before. In my case, not in almost ten years. What then makes the dilation possible? Triggers it? I like the idea that we are capable of dilation, of growth, of becoming “more” than we were, from being fundamentally unstable or rather, unsettled organisms. This is as close to a central truth I hold as any. It's an overarching theme for me that growth and information and meaning worth finding always occurs, or at least, arises, from the instabilities of the landscape, be it theoretical, be it verbal, be it emotional, be it your relationship, be it your soul, be it whatever story you're telling yourself. I don't want to become one of those people who theorize some bullshit about scarcity and disaray being the mother of progress and invention innovation, etc; I resist that generally when it is presented as pertains social interactions, the conditions in which people live. Adversity builds character—that’s simplistic and it’s bullshit. Dysfunction only builds, well, dysfunction. But intellectually and emotionally yes, I think what makes you capable of reaching past what you thought was the limit is a fundamental conception (albeit one that can fade almost out of sight if you make it so) that limits are fictional, that more can happen, or rather, that you can make more happen inside yourself. So for me a lot of the satisfaction with my conversation with X was through this return to this my central conviction, which is that I need not necessarily settle for what is presently at hand. That I need not understand any given moment as given or as final. That I can go my extra miles.

It's weird--I used to feel such pains in trying to get to certain emotional "clarities" or emotionals breakthroughs that I thought I was "really owed" a proper response from the person I was going there for or with. Say if I went there in a conversation with X and made myself vulnerable, I would be putting everything on the line in that exchange, and he had better return in kind. This was my M.O. certainly—to be vulnerable almost as an offensive, becoming the emotional equivalent of someone who throws themselves off a cliff to test whether the loved one will reach out and catch them. And if they don’t, if they didn’t, I would be devastated beyond reason and belief. The other day I did no such a thing, my vulnerability was to myself and the rectifying, the proper response expected—that I would not fall to my knees and weep and wail and despair—I expected it from me. Of course X did not give me anything in return but it was not about him anymore. I would love to say because it would make my experience the proof of something I trust is true, that if I had not gone through these horrible years and this particularly horrible last couple of year, I would still know what I know. I would still have grown this extra bit. Dilation would have come. I suppose that’s probable but I have never known it to be true.

Here’s wishing for the one who will come test my boundaries in a more seductive way, tug at them subtly rather that relentlessly tear them down, somewhat gently—certainly creatively—nudge a bit of growth out of me, in a sort of give and take thing that feels good, as opposed to kicks my ass from harsh truth to harsher outcome. Here’s to what I’ll find room for now that I I’ve dilated much.

Vintage Seven

2007-09-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

Guess who’s back in the motherfucking house? My son!!!

Well he never left--after all, he is only seven, but he’s not been featured. I’ve been writing about the adults and boring myself to tears. In real life though I’ve not had a moment’s boredom because my child’s like a rocket ship of revelations, milestones, quotations, memorable moments as he tears into his seventh (and in his words, best yet) year. And here I was failing to catalog all this shit. I’m going to take a crack at it and commit to doing this regularly because if there is a legitimate rock star in my life whose every move should be depicted Us Weekly style (“Stars: They’re Just Like Us. They Suffer From Unrequited Love!”) it’s my son, and not me. I know, I know, shocking I could say that. But I bow only to true idols. Episodes below.

Episode 1: One is Never Too Young To Play Love’s Fool

Today was a strange day Mama
Why?
Chelsea spoke to me
(Chelsea—the girlfriend of first grade, whom he imagined was his girlfriend is a Mean Girl. The sort of creature so foul for her young years that she appears airbrushed in the morning and airbrushed at the end of the day when the normal girls have frizzy hair and flushed cheeks from playing at being children. She’s an ice queen latina barbie—hence her first name. A creature whose unpleasantness is only outdone by her mother’s and who airs she puts on almost bring me to a verbal throwdown beginning with the words “Bitch, I know you didn’t just” until I realize she’s seven. Seven going on seventeen. But her hair is golden. Read: light brown with some blondish streaks that could very well be highlights but ain’t hear that from me.)

Doesn’t she always speak to you?
No, this year, since school started she never speaks to me
Excuse me?
Yep
Doesn’t speak to y ou?
Nope
Like she doesn’t know you, like you guys were not friends last year and almost boyfriend and girlfriend??
Yeah, she just doesn’t look at me at all or talk to me.

At this point my child emotes and starts to tear up. I realize that the past few days of home therapy where he’s been crying out his anxieties about second grade and learning the meaning of the phrase “welling up”—a mistake I made in explaining that shit to this Shakespearean thespian!—had much more to do with Chelsea than with Mrs. Anisco’s purported evil ways.

Hold on, look don’t cry. Well how did you feel when she did talk to you?
Weird
Well that’s because you were probably happy right?
Yeah…
But upset at the same time because she was mean before.
Yeah…
That’s the weirdness…. So do you think she’ll be nice from now on?
Yeah.

Yeah, but are you prepared for the fact that the bitch is likely to do that shit to you over and over again, even perhaps for the duration of ten formative years of your youth like a leech that sucks the blood while making your head woozy enough that you don’t actually notice you’re slowly dying while waiting for her to treat you like a decent person?!!
Well, rest assured. I did not say that to the child, I just said:

Well just take care of your feelings. She could still be mean again because well, people sometimes do stupid shit.
Ok.
But I hope she’s not.
Me too!
You know, why don’t you think about all your other friends who are nice, you know? Focus on them. So many cool girls are your buddies, why don’t you want them to be your girlfriend?

Mama, duh, hello?! We love the ones we love.

I’m thinking to myself, what the fuck? Did I do this or do they (we) come wired with a stoopid ass unrequited love propensity chip? A child is a profoundly self-interested, needs oriented, selfish creature. He has to be taught that if I buy the candy bar maybe it should not pain him to give me a little piece. But here when it comes to love, the self interest crumbles like a cookie and we “love the assholes we love.” What is this? I tell you what, this is a game we lose before we even know how to play it, that's what.

Now I segway into episode 2 with a disclaimer which is that I am sure my son watching General Hospital (yes, the soap) with me is not appropriate. I know this because it’s not appropriate for me to watch it, frankly. But the bonding is unbeatable you know? We watch it and it’s borderline inappropriate so it makes him feel really special—I have clear, clear, very fond memories of those moments with my mother. Did I say “fond memories” and “mother” in the same sentence? Now I know why I can’t stop the GH ritual in my home; it feeds a little hole in my heart called “nice shit that happened when I was a child with my mom.” Awww. But anyway, yeah, not okay. But funny.

Episode II: Soapy Love Mess

I told you a million times that I cannot explain this soap to you without drawing up a chart.
No, no. I get it. You mean that Sonny the bad guy with a good heart...and Jerry the bad guy with the bad heart, they hate each other… but they have to work together now to battle the bad guy that's like a really really bad guy, which that guy that maybe poisoned Kate works for? I can totally follow this without a chart.

I was in awe of the accuracy and succinctness of the summary. I felt emboldened: maybe I could tell him more!

But this is what you don't understand, when Sonny was your age, that bad guy Trevor was his evil step dad and accused him of trying to kill his mother only because
Oh you mean falling down the stairs, yeah I know about that.
How do you know about that?
I watch GH with my dad. He watches it. He likes it. Behind your back. Sonny's your favorite but do you know who my dad's favorite is?
No
Jason

(So your dad’s favorite is the brooding emotionally challenged painfully loyal right hand man of the mob boss who sacrifices his happiness for that of all others? Figures.)
Then later--when he could rip himself away from a pivotal seduction scene in the hot tub, ("is that a Jacuzzi or a hot tub?") long enough to see the Elizabeth/Nikolas talk, he said:

Wait wait wait a minute. Did she just say she cheated on Lucky with Jason?
Yep
So Lucky is cheating on her with Sam right now in the hot tub which she doesn’t know BUT she cheated on Lucky with Jason first?
Yep
Oh my god. This is crazy.
I wanted to say, You don't know the crazier part--do you know who Jason's girlfriend used to be? SAM! And I also wanted to say, "Son, the word you want to use here is not crazy, it's... soapy", but I stopped myself short of causing permanent damage to the child.

Episode III: Virtuosity Reality
This episode I heard from my friend E who experienced it first hand; I apologize for stealing the story for the purposes of this record. So in this case, he’s the adult not italicized,not me.

So have you made up your own music to play yet?
(Silence, piercing look, silence and then)
What? You don’t know about me and my keyboard?
No, what do you mean?
You don’t know I’ve been rockin out?
Uh, no
Cause I’ve been rockin out. You want me to play you something?
Yeah, of course.
Are you ready?
Yes

And so he set his keyboard to record and played what he thought was an amazing piece of pop rock piano music with some “drums” programming in there. And then went to sit next to my friend E, to brood and listen to the replay. Replay plays.

You know, for some reason, it sounds better when I do it then when the keyboard does. Do you hear that? Do you hear how mine’s better? I’m not sure why that is.

Update: he’s now moved on to hate the piano classes, the keyboard and rockin out in that sense and believes himself an electric guitar virtuoso. He suggested to E that maybe E’s roommate (a real life musician) and him could have “you know, a guitar play off?”

Appendix: Newly Acquired Skills and Stuff
His first real suit for my friend's wedding: E took him to get it at Brooks Brothers and he took him to the taylor. Speaking of, he wore the navy blue perfection that was that suit with his chucks. And he looked sexy. There I said it. There's no other words for it. It was a hot ass look.

His first watch. From the gap. Digital though. He can't tell time very well so I think we start where we can. Also can't tie shoelaces and I got him fancy school shoes with velcro straps under the leather buckle. I think maybe I am an enabler.

The appropriate use of "air quotes" and of the tool of sarcasm as in: "you never get it when I am being sarcastic". Which is a shame because he does it well. But it took a while, it's a long way from telling me he was "just being sarcasticated."

A really sophisticated skill at self-conscious manipulation of adult feeling, emotion and the truth. A friend of mine says that Jung (the shrink) said a child had two fundamental rights: masturbation and lying. My kid's versed on his fundamental rights, both of them.

Fifth of september, day I'll always remember

2007-09-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday September 5, 2007, almost ten years to the date I met him, the father of my child, my ex, a celebrity by no other name in my stories, I called him and we had the following exchange, give and take some paraphrasing and creative non-fictional license (J stands for me and X for…duh):

J: Are you planning on having a baby with that woman soon, or are you currently expecting?

X: (pregnant silence—pun intended!)

J: Hello? You there? Is this one o f those “dropped calls can fuck up shit” commercials?

X: I’m here. Why are you asking me that now?

J: Just answer the question and be honest. It’s just me X, you can be honest.

X: That’s the thing, I can’t because I don’t want to hurt your feelings and----

Hold up, wait a minute, freeze frame and let me walk onto the screen and address the audience directly here. I feel I owe you an explanation. For a year now X has equivocated on the exactitudes of his involvement with said woman. After summer last year, the bomb exploded that he had “a girlfriend”—see chapter entitled “Giant Ice Cream Scooper”. Then it was smokes and mirrors to suggest that had been a fling that ended. Around January he got back real close to me. Then there were suggestions to counter that closeness that came from circumstances but still no real clear honest words from him. There was a rapprochement though, for sure. Members of his family were encouraged—could things be on the upswing with us? I tried to not be optimistic because I knew because he was making no pronouncements towards any such outcome and to be crass about, he was not trying to get in my pants. But all the while and despite hovering realities suggesting otherwise, X continued to be in my life and give me the proverbial rope to hang my little pathetic hopes on: he acted like he wanted me in his and wanted to be in my life. Myriad gifts, showers of attention and a high degree of explicit and implicit control over my daily routine. One obvious way was to claim to have almost absolutely no ability to babysit our son, especially in that night/weekend time windown when people who need one usually get a life. No, he was too busy, working hard on raising some funds to help improve our lives and amend for past wrongs. He’d love to watch him but he couldn’t—so I was house arrested.

Perversely, his “constant calls” worked like crack on me (how much he needs to speak with moi!) but very much like GPS for him. I was never cause for a “where you at text?” so much as I was a known bleep on his radar—always accounted for and guaranteed to not be having any fun or sex because I was with my child at home. Further perverse were the endless conversations about his future endeavors: our business ideas, our savings plans to get a mortgage for me—but really, was it for me or for us?, him passing me that inhibriating feeling of “I’m the only one he talks about all this stuff with” laced with “he really needs me”... Again, crack for me but very much like, oh I don’t know, what is the name for shamelessly self-serving ego tripping drug? Yeah, I would guess it was that for him. Most perverse of all though, and most hurtful in the end, were the instances, two of them, when confronted by a very terrified, weak, teary and vulnerable me, he actually denied all: denied her importance, her worth to him and as a person, and the reasonableness of my anxieties. And so this is what the year had been like: me taking every little crumb of attention from X to (secretely though not exactly subconsciously) tell myself that yes, he does did love me; him just keeping me on my crumbs diet, in the dark.

I did a whole year of him pretending that we had this wonderfully close, warm, profound relationship. A relationship interestingly lacking sex and the parts where I get something out of it for myself, beside delusions. All this happening while he developed a great new love of his own with someone who, like himself and unlike myself, was fully informed. Can I say that I was not exactly aware of the depth of that deception? I know I sound retarded but those who say love is blind mistook a mental deficiency for an optical one: love is just retarded. Did I have the intuition to feel afraid all year? Yes, of course. Did the attention minus sex equation give me anxiety and make me feel dirty and pathetic just right after it made me feel great, every time? Yes. Did I feel at times like all I was getting was a charity handout straight from the vault of his guilt? Yes. I can’t say I didn’t think these things but I can say, I have to say because it is true, that I didn’t think them in the place in my mind where thoughts register or where thoughts connect to action, or where thoughts are allowed to escape the vicious onslaught of sanitizing rationalization my ego subjects them to. (Does my mind even have such a pristine secure thinking space? Probably not). I knew but I couldn’t really know and didn’t want to know and I was being told “not to know”—you get the idea. And back to the action of this fateful phonecall:

J: No, yes you can be honest. You have not spared my feelings through being dishonest. My feelings have been walking up and down my sleeves, bleeding, with a black eye and on clutches for you to see for 12 months, if you know what I mean... So please. Look, I'll tell you what I think the truth is, since you can’t say it, and you just confirm or deny.

X: Okay
(J’s internal monologue: Did this motherfucker just say “Okay?”)

J: (Ahem, clear throat, heart pounding like crazy) Here is what I think, I think “You have been in a loving, serious relationship with her and you love her and she loves you and you’re even thinking about babies, and this has gone on for a whole year now.”

X: … Yeah, yeah, that’s correct.

J: So for this entire past year, while you knew I foolishly entertained the possibility she was just a fling, and while you had repeatedly told me she was just that, going as far as to disparage her intellect and character to emphasize that point--this entire year, you were having a relationship with her?

X: I was trying to spare your feelings.

J: You hold keys to my apartment, speak to me 10 times a day, know my every move and don’t think to mention that while this is going on and you’re taking up all this space in my life, you have a serious girlfriend in yours?

X: Like I said, I was just trying to spare your feelings…

And then we had the rest of the talk where I get on my high horse of self-righteous indignation because well, what else does one have left in this context? I explain in detail the depths and range of his indecency as a human being. Because we do that when we are hurt, strangely. We waste time telling a motherfucker, “do you understand, no let me spell it out for you, how much this makes you a m-o-t-h-e-r-f-u-c-k-e-r?!”, as if this is in any way a strike back at them. Then, in the moment, of course, he agrees and mea culps himself all the way back to 1998, the most obvious way to respond. And then, shameless, because hurt people have no shame, I get on the mother of the high horse of self-righteousness, the even higher horse of Maturity and Generosity and outline how we will handle this. I engender this measured tone, I sound so noble, I feel like I should slap ‘im with my white glove, or something. I say something to the effect of wishing them the best and just wanting my space and time and looking forward to the time when relations will normalize. You get the idea, we’ve all seen that scene in many movies:
He predictably feigns pain at the thought we will be cut off from each other now, references the sort of friend he thought I’d be forever, something about his homie and about his special relationship to his baby’s mother, “homie” and “baby mother” being the top and sole two words infamous list of shit your ex should never fucking call you.

Then it happens, the watershed moment happens. I have a fantasy in my mind of who I am in this moment, in this conversation and it materializes. And I realize, I am really doing this: I have passed from pretending to be in control to being in control. As I am talking, as this is happening, I am walking inside myself and trying to find my panic, my terror, my devastating pain at the loss of him, that familiar demon, I want to find it before it finds me, I do not want to walk unaware into another scene of prostration on the floor of my apartment wailing and… I find nothing. It is no longer there. I realize that I have faked it til I made it and I am zen right now, I am capable of seeing this through. Though without having had a real meditative breakthrough I feel something like those people who through meditation got their ego to shut up long enough so that they could take a big bite of reality, swallow it, not choke to death and live to tell.

So like a Maya Angelou cliché, I rise and shit, on the pedestal of “I am the one who called you out”. I am the one who albeit many months (years!) and sad episodes late, said I would like the drama of you making me look stupid and degraded to myself, to your new girlfriend and to everyone who knows me , to stop. I am the one who said, don't lie anymore, I don't want the pity, I don't need the pity. I am the one gladly taking whatever little’s left of my dignity, thank you very much, and leaving this sordid little party, like a ho with runny stockings and lipstick who knows it’s going to be fine once she takes a shower and changes clothes. I am the one making the first move in my own best interest that I can be proud of making, in almost 10 years. It may all be a delusion of grandeur but I literally feel myself take flight, and I am the light breeze over the darkening forrest that was this part of my life, and I am going to go now and hung. up. this. phone. Fully adrenalized and distraught and very pained and elated and confused and drowsy and aprehensive is how I describe the aftermath of that phonecall; such is the place from which I write today.

On My Friends

2007-07-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

I just had a lovely second lunch with a person who is going to be a lifelong friend of mine. She is a terrific woman who really feels to me like who I might be in 10 years. She’s many things that feel familiar but to have them reflected was...well if it wasn't life changing it was day altering. And she is that rare conversationalist who has all the topics firmly on the table at all times and ready for recall. It was like talking while sober but feeling like you’re talking while on E—for people who do E, this will make complete sense, and for those who don’t, this will sound alarming as a reference point. So we discussed a lot of things: mothers, daughters, sons, marriages, our common obsession with a certain kind of a man who might be described, somewhat simplistically and unimaginatively, as “macho”, and tons more. More interestingly we spent a lot of time dissecting our difficulties in relationships with women. We've both had a considerable amount of experience being at the receiving end of some bitch darts, some defensive bitch attacks, on the part of women who, we thought, had much more going on than we had. Part of it was this melancholic frustration of having the messier, muddier, backstabbier relationships happen with women, when truly we’ve been committed to building great relationships with women. Part of it was this sense that we are perpetually misunderstood as people who project a certain humility and insecurity that is not real, and therefore are assholes—or at the very least , worthy of contempt. It was refreshing to see that someone older would have the same issues, for the same reasons. Almost the precise same reasons. But her insights were truly profound, as were her questions. To the point, some of the questions:
Why do many women assume that when we say that we are really insecure about ourselves, that we can’t be serious, that it is false modesty? And then she and I both fell upon this question and it clarified for us that in the very end, we might just be self-involved egomaniacs ourselves: why on earth would many women assume that with all the drama (real and imagined) that imbues our (self-involved) lives (let the melodramatic self-narrativization on this blog stand witness!) we would find additional time to posture, or construct and then project a false impression of ourselves; to compete with others in addition to competing with the little self-loathing voice in our heads; to, in other words, go above and beyond our own preocupations and actually give a shit what they think, enough to try and manipulate it? Why would we waste any time telling them lies? And why is it not okay, with most women, to speak frankly about these things? About the idea that yeah, for all our faults and they are many, we’re solidly “good people”, very adept socially, more intelligent and intuitive than average, and in possession of a really good interpersonal skills arsenal? Needless to say, we had one of those great soulmatey moments, and it was a summer lunch and the kind of moment that warrants and a good class of white wine--which we of course, had. In fact we had two, in case we weren't effusive enough.

It all got me thinking a recurrent thought that I don’t articulate quite enough and that is the thought of my luck with friends. I am really lucky, friend-wise and let us not waste time apologizing for the sacharine nature of this line of thinking. I tell myself my luck with friends compensates for what I got dealt love-wise and parent-wise. It’s the perfect yin for that yang (this metaphor's just the wine talking, really, as I know not the meaning or spelling of either term). Great friends is the best cure for the ailment of having the people who were first and closest to your heart be the biggest assholes in the world. You know, your mother, your partner, when they don’t come through, they wreak a fundamental havoc that you spend your life trying to undo. These undellible marks are left and they map out your life as nothing more than a journey to a nowhere land of evening scores. And it hurts all along the way, and happiness is misrepresented as those moments where it just hurts less. And that’s not way to live you come to realize, exhaused. BUT if you, like me, have these friends who far exceed your expectations in all kinds of ways, you get another shot at it and you get to reinvent yourself not alone, and not in the dark. And, further, when you think your roster of friends could not in any way improve, you find more great friends; solidly good people who can trigger a boost in your quality of life that is quite unequivocal, quite unmistakable. I think there may even be some visible sparks that flywhen it happens... Is that corny? Probably. Today’s lunch was that kind of moment but, as if it weren’t enough of a big blessing, it served to remind me of how lucky I am to be the person who has had that experience more than once in a lifetime, enough times to recognize it well. I have been lucky to have that experience way after the socially promiscuous youth years, way after I need more friends, way after I am looking for more friends. The fact that I can still, at 31, find new lifelong friends and have that spark fly, well that's just beyond what's to be expected. My friends are a true testament of my worth as a human being and I, for better or worse, still very much need and seek out such testaments of self-worth. If I were to go on a mad chase for them I’d probably steer myself in the most terribly wrong directions, so I feel truly blessed to not have to do it; truly blessed to have a way of making great friends, as simplistic as that sounds. Running out of smart ways to say that I feel really rained on, friends-wise. That may be in the end, the best sign of a life well lived and anyone who knows me knows, when the time comes, I'll be looking for that sign.

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

2007-06-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

Is Being Happy an idea whose time has come? Someone asked me the other day about whether my job made me happy—and it doesn’t; do you know what I said to them? In lieu of the answer? I said (I kid you not):

"Half the world’s population, three billion souls, live on less than two dollars a day. Half of those, one and a half souls, make do on less than one dollar a day. It is a blessing beyond words to be able to provide for a life that does not have to shrink itself into 100 pennies. To expect fulfillment and happiness in that work, in this world, is so pretentious, it’s almost obscene. "

I didn’t say it to evade the question, I said it sincerely but only because the question upset me. I said it to neutralize the question, to fend it off. The question felt to me to be an aggression against my person, my unhappy person. It felt rude like someone pointing out something that obviously upsets you. My answer was half a kick back and a fuck you. This exchange, the way I felt, the way I answered, has stuck with me and brought me back--humbly, I admit--to this writing. I had not been writing as I often do when I have nothing to say. Maybe in the moment of my melodramatic self-righteous retort to the question of whether my job makes me happy I saw myself moving past not having anything to say into the hubris of pretending to have something really deep to say—or rather, something to hide behind. I’ve been many things I’m not proud of over these past ten or so crazy years. Could it be that I’ve become a coward too?

(to be continued; this line of reasoning and writing needs to happen only in small dosages)

Everyone Forgets Icarus Also Flew

2007-05-11T11:21:00.000-07:00

Below are two poems. By way of introduction into a topic I can't seem to really wrap my head around properly. Properly is the wrong word--I'm full of wrong words and people are making fun of me for being concerned with them. Words like "properly" and "normal" and "closure" and "timely". The first poem is about a way the heart hurts over this and reading that first line is like lifting something off of me. The second may be about the way the heart lets that go--and for that reason makes me cry more than the first. But anyway, here's two poems. Thanks to my homie for the second one.

First Poem Failing and Flying
by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It's the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last. Every morning she was asleep in my bed like a visitation, the gentleness in her like antelope standing in the dawn mist. Each afternoon I watched her coming back through the hot stony field after swimming, the sea light behind her and the huge sky on the other side of that. Listened to her while we ate lunch. How can they say the marriage failed? Like the people who came back from Provence (when it was Provence) and said it was pretty but the food was greasy. I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Second Poem

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. --Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Love & Myth, Part One

2007-04-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

I shouldn’t have left therapy. I know I shouldn’t have. I mean, initially I had it right that I should be in therapy because I was having trouble coping with the Total End Of The Love. Qualify that, I was having trouble comprehending it. Actually processing it. We had sessions about how I was going through grief and how grief challenges intellectually inclined people. I found reading Joan Didion’s book life changing but then I totally went into self-loathing mode because how dare I think that I relate? However bold I may be in my melodramatic tendencies, nobody died. In fact, I see him everyday. However bold I may in my revisionism of our history, I never had a marriage like that and when I say that I don’t mean time-wise. This has been interesting for me, the useless nature of proportion and relativity when it comes to feeling heartbroken. Heartbroken too is such a stupid phrase. It suggest you feel one specific thing, in one specific way and one specific place. Nothing could be furthest from the truth. Like today, as I write and I know I should not write because I am not coherent, I feel a combination of quiet desperation, massively widespread confusion and exhaustion. Whatever I was feeling back then when I said I needed the therapy, it was bad enough to drag me back there. But not bad enough to overwhelm my constant need for control. I sat in that room and freaked out too much, contemplated too much fear and disaster and out the other way I ran. There is evidence on this very pages of the day I pretended to be all set and ready to stop going to therapy. In my defense, I was not lying. In my defense there were things conspiring against my being in therapy. Foremost among them was said need for control—I went into therapy because I felt out of control. Failing to regain in 4 weeks, I just preferred to stop going. I missed the whole point about how I was supposed to go to therapy to work through and ultimately relinquish my need for control. I feel like I miss so many points. Today I feel very honest and able to admit on the record that a lot of this is an avoidance of conclusions. I say to myself:

--if I don’t go to therapy I will not conclude that this Ending is the best thing that could happen to me.

--if I don’t talk to anybody about this, or stop talking before it gets conclusive, I can avoid that this Ending is the best thing that could happen to me.

Ultimately I say to myself that if I keep dragging this out, seeing as he is not dead like Joan Didion’s husband, then this Ending—which is likely the best thing that can happen to me—won’t come to pass.

Today I mostly feel like this is what I have been doing. It’s taken about a week to marinate this moment of supposed clarity. The time before this week I was telling myself that I was holding on because I knew what I wanted and I wanted for this Ending to not happen because I knew it was NOT in fact, the best thing that could happen to me. It was the worse. It is the worse. See what I mean? I really don’t know what the hell the truth is. I know I want to be happy but that’s as conclusive as saying you want the sun to come up in the morning.

Meanwhile, my friend gave me this great poem—mostly because we love the last line, in my case I LOVE the last three lines and I am thinking about them a lot. Especially about “sharpen love in the service of myth”. Love and myth--masquerades too come to mind. The misperception of things like fear and pride and stubborness as being nobler things like love and courage and insight. I'm not sure I'm misperceiving or misrepresenting to myself but I am pretty steadily worried that I am. ..

I would hate to find myself just swimming in lies for fear of drowning in a little bit of truth. Now about the poem:

CANARY
by Rita Dove
for Michael S. Harper

Billie Holiday's burned voice

had as many shadows as lights,

a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano,

the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.

(Now you're cooking, drummer to bass,

magic spoon, magic needle.

Take all day if you have to

with your mirror and your bracelet of song.)

Fact is, the invention of women under siege

has been to sharpen love in the service of myth.

If you can't be free, be a mystery

Baby Michael Jackson

2007-03-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

My son is obsessed with Michael Jackson. He is studying him like you study a book, like you do close reading of passages. Like a movie critic seeing a foreign film. Everyday, he barely takes off his school clothes before he sits in front of his TV for yet another viewing of the DVD entitled “Michael Jackson: Number Ones.” Every day he has new and more interesting observations: “did you notice that at the end of Smooth Criminal, he winks?”

I recently enquired whether it was not time to return the DVD to Netflix (ostensibly to order say, Moonwalker, so he can better appreciate the Smooth Criminal video) and he just wept. He literally cried at the mere suggestion that he might come home one day and not have his object of research, delight and worship. Michael Jackson is his God. He proudly declares it:

“I watched the Dirty Diana video 14 times in a row!” or “I wish he was my dad!”. MJ is his only topic of discussion. In fact Michael Jackson is now popular in his first grade class, purely because of him:

“When Eliana tried to do the thriller dance, she totally messed it up.”
“You know Moses said Michael Jackson owns a monkey?”
“Today at lunch when we were playing Baby Michael Jackson, Joseph kept squeezing my cheek extra hard on purpose.”

Hold up, hold up, hold up. Say again?
“Today? At lunch? Well, we were playing Baby Michael Jackson and…

What the hell is that?
“It’s a game we play--that I made up.”

(No shit Sherlock. Who else could make up such a game?). Oh. And what is the game like?
“Well, I am Baby Michael Jackson”
(Duh)
“…and I throw a birthday party and all my friends come.”
Wow. Ok.

It started innocently enough. It started with one listen of Billie Jean on my friend’s Ipod. It was amazing to see someone who never heard that intro, you know that funk guitar popified to death intro which we all associate with a walk and a finger snap and a whole lot of what cool means, have their little minds rocked for the first time with that intro. From there he quickly became obsessed with learning the lyrics. He’d just play the song over and over again, extremely loudly and sing fake lyrics off key. All of this love was happening without a visual, but he already was entertaining what it would be like, as in the one time he was overheard ad libing to a listening of “Bad” by sounding like a baby Travis Bickle:
(mumbling): “You’re bad? I’m bad. Are you talking to me? What did you say?”

So I thought well he should see what the MJ thing was all about and suggested we get the videos. Famous last suggestion. He is currently very close to a full memorization of the main choreography in Bad and Thriller. He also likes to have the video playing in his room and imitating in (from memory, and verbally) in the kitchen:

“Right now, he crossed his legs, then he kicked. Then he did this thing. Then right now, he’s still doing this thing. Now he’s turning and boom, this thing. And then like that.”

An interesting contextual truth is that even despite his obsession, he couldn’t say if Michael Jackson or Justin Timberlake was better (before the MJ crack happened, there was the What Goes Around crack which involved him blasting that song while pretending to sing it and play it on his keyboards, all very loud). Of both he said they are both “the best.”

My son, let's be frank, couldn't dance for shit three weeks ago. I mean he didn't think so, he thought he was a great impersonator of Chris Brown, Usher and Justin Timberlake but he was not at all. He looked like Jackie Chang at the club--which if you know Jackie Chang you know he knows kung-fu, but not funk. Suddenly, as he worships in the church of Michael Jackson, his dancing has been completely “recreated” by his encounter with the funk-flamenco-musical theatre inflected MJ style, to a hilarious degree and he is now moving much better. I think MJ dances like everyone wishes they could dance--with drama. I think my son's current inclination for self-generating free movement and pseudo jazz dance is great but I am seriously concerned that next time he’s at a kids party, he will terrify his peers who will be *just* trying to stick to the Chicken Noodle Soup and the Walk It Out...

People who have children will know what I mean when I say this: an obsession with Michael Jackson may just be the most provocative, evocative, and mysteriously open-ended interest your child can display.

The March 20 Manifesto (delayed by a few days)

2007-03-23T09:20:00.000-07:00

So after all is said and done, today I went down to The Service (aka Immigration) and had the famed interview. My last ever interview! My fluency in English was apparent, and he did ask me about my college years and my life but he still needed to test whether I was literate or not:
--Do you know how to read and write?
Uh...yeah. We did just mention my having a BA.

--I have to ask. (Really? I think what you mean is you have to "ascertain my literacy" but I don't think you have to ask a person who has a college degree if they can read and write. I'm not saying anything though because you are Immigration Man, and scary.)

--Please read the following paragraph, he said. I did. It was something like “Today we went to the grocery store to buy eggs for baking.” I read it super fast but not too fast because I didn't want him to think I was being a smart ass. Tough balance.

--Please write the following sentence: “They have horses at the farm.” I did. And resisted t he urge to ask "of all the mothefucking standard sentences in the world...?!"

Then I was asked those moral rectitude questions I always joke about: are you a communist or were you ever? A prostitute? A drug user? A drug trafficker? A gambler? The one that always scares you: “have you EVER lied to us in order to get benefits from us.” (I’m like dude, no).

Then he says to me, “What is my name?” and I noticed he's flirting, which puts me at ease. I said "Agent Vasquez". He said “No my first name” I said "Carlos." He said “Good, but that is not part of the questionnaire.” I said, “I noticed.” And I did notice as well that behind him was a big old calendar with an American Eagle on it and red letter saying Sexual Harassment is a Federal Offense (or something like that). Which I found hilariously a proposito... I had that thought and then regrets that he wasn't more hot so I could properly flirt back.

He then went to the civics test which I had prepared for using these nifty flash cards provided free of charge by the government. I had trouble with three questions in my stack of cards when practicing last night:
--I kept forgetting Georgia was one of the 13 colonies,
--I kept confusing the date of Declaration with that of Constitution (both 17something)
-- and I kept mislisting the “amendments that pertain to voting rights.”
He of course, asked me the amendment question with glee. I said “24, 26, 19 and… uh, 14th?”
And he said, No that’s due process. Then I said "13th?" He said, "That's slavery." So I said, “well it's relevant!” but he didn’t get the joke. It's 15, he said, that's okay.

He also asked me how many judges there are in the Supreme, if I would bear arms if the law required it (which I translated as a question of my willingness to dodge a possible draft) and if I believed in the constitution. Which is a strange question to ask because it makes me think of what people ask about the bible. I don’t think the constitution needs one to believe in it, in that way. It’s not an act of faith as much…The Supreme Law of The Land. I was also asked who is the president. And what is the major benefit of citizenship. (“Voting for Obama in 2008?”).

The amount of competence for citizenship I needed to exhibit was exhibited and just like that, MAGIC!, they gave me a handshake into America! “Congratulations you made it. Just wait for an appointment letter for your Oath ceremony. Do you have questions for me?”
I said yes, I did: “Do I EVER have to come here again?” No, you are done.

Next time I’m at Kennedy Airport, (my own private non-Mexican border crossing site, where I’ve had so many adventures, including being grilled in the “side office”) I’ll get to skip the humiliatingly long line in favor of that pleasant/fast moving citizens-only line. Of course I’ll most likely be coming from home (home?) and most of the folks on said shitty line will be my compatriotas, nervously getting their own border crossing stories right, scared of the border police and their loud rude ways… They’ll see me skip over to the Other Line and if they know me, they’ll congratulate me: I’m done.

This is very strange.

I feel relieved and… like a sellout whore that lost all integrity. We won independence from the Portuguese and our own citizenship in 1975, and I was born in 1976. My grandfather, whose father was Portuguese famously revoked that citizenship in favor of the CV one--which gets him into exactly zero countries without a long drawn out visa process where he has to assure them that he is not in fact planning to illegally immigrate. He did that on principle. I grew up learning that a CV should not take citizenship lightly and today I lose claim to that degree of principle. At the same time, over half a million of us live abroad—more than live at home last I checked--and unless I’m mistaken, those who are not citizens of wherever they live really wished they were.

I am thankful and relieved for finally being beyond the reach of the system: a recent raid in New Bedford resulted in over 300 arrests of Cape Verdean illegals who are now being held for imminent deportation, as far away as Texas. Some of these were parents, and their children were not accounted for in some cases. We’re told parents in this case may be “the lucky ones” in the end, who will try and resist deportation because they have so called “Anchor Babies.” That creepy phrase, anchor baby-- is a real phrase that is used.

I also felt a graspable level of an understanding of the greatness of the process-dare I say, of this country's stated values as represented by the process. My thing about America is that it allows a vast magnitude of humanity to try and survive. It is a lie to say that it aids that survival, in some fair and equal and generous way--we all know it doesn't, most of what's said about this country lies because it overplays what its central greatness is and that is space and...incoherence. And when I think America, most often I am referring to New York and one's ability to truly choose between individuating oneself and connecting, as it becomes needed. This is a city without a community overwhelming you, but it is also a city to find a community should you need one. One of your making. There is a lot of constraints to having anything of one's making in the world--a lot of space and incoherence is about wealth, endless and endlessly accrued and excess and to judge by the environmentalists, all this shit's coming to an end. Emile Durkheim who I just reread talks about some fundamental need of society (and some fundamental sociability of humans) for regulation, for restrains, for a sense of coherence. So I am sure in some cosmic way just growing bigger and bigger and bleeding out your edges as this country always has will result, is resulting in social forces calling for a pull back. Hence crazy immigration backlash. But still, this idea that I should be able to come here, spend 3-5 years in "resident status", pass that silly test and be a citizen is truly...something. But then again, nations need recruits: "are you willing to bear arms...". "Do you always pay your taxes?" "Do you support your son." --What do you mean, I asked. "Financially." Yes. "And your husband?". "Yeah him too." --Well, that's a bit more information that I needed, he said. Oh really? You asked if I am living off of your government OR your fellow citizen and I had to tell you that I make my own way. Between individuation and community, as I see fit: I'm left alone to cohere as possible, amidst the incoherence.

Still, for someone who technically, as Beyonce would say, got Upgraded, I mostly downgraded: less than those who would not need to subject themselves to this process. I plan to raise two cosmos to a not-so-distant future when we no longer need to work at being citizens of any place; where that word falls out of usage for failing to properly represent its meaning. Ai ai ai… As always when feeling truly conflicted, I write myself a little ditty:

The March 20 Permanent Immigrant Manifesto

I am

what no man is

An island

Of the difference;

Of the suspension

Of being

Equally unattached

Each border uncommitted

I am

The future’s

lonely homeless homeland

The I

in migrant

Bigot Fort Clinic?

2007-01-25T10:01:00.000-08:00

From Salon.com:

“In a classic Hollywood move, "Grey's Anatomy" actor Isaiah Washington, in the midst of really bad P.R. after his repeated use of the term "faggot," has checked himself into some kind of treatment facility. In a statement he released yesterday, Washington said: "With the support of my family and friends, I have begun counseling. I regard this as a necessary step toward understanding why I did what I did and making sure it never happens again." Insiders say that ABC demanded that he enter a program "to examine why he would say such hateful words," but there's no word yet on just what type of facility Washington has gone into.”

Hmm… Maybe he went to Bigot Fort Clinic, as sister institution to the Betty Ford Clinic! Where Michael Richards went to get treated. And Sean Connery, in the 1980s, after he had that interview where he explained to Barbara Walters that sometimes women need to get smacked up, though not punched (there is a difference). They are healing people there, one bigot at a time…

Seriously, how do these people find the nerve to do The Whole Thing? Not just the slur, the whole slur-apology-rehab thing. I get the slur, the slur is your true nature. But the apology makes no sense. These people, they don’t subtle things, you know like “I don’t have problem with homosexuality per se, it’s just not for me”--they say faggot—twice in the same month. They don’t say “Some of my best friends are black”—they say nigger 4 times and then make a lynching reference. The slur is what it is. I mean why apologize for things like that? Or rather HOW? It’s ridiculous. How would the apology work? A slur is not a contingent insult like “fuck you”. A slur is the articulation of a position-- a long held, value position that you hold. A slur is not like arguing with someone and falling so low as to call them something foul. It’s not “the reason I divorced you is because you are fat.” The dude who said that to my co-worker could in fact apologize for that one. It’s conceivable that his explanation—which was that he was so mad he wanted to deliberately say something As Foul As Possible to hurt her—is true. We can all relate to the manipulative move where in the heat of the moment you dig really deep and low and throw some fucked up shit at someone. Not so for a slur like faggot or nigger.

Not to brag but I’m pretty righteous. I mean, I don’t do slurs. But I do say Bitch.
[Ok, I say nigga but I’m not entertaining that conversation right now]. I say Bitch a lot. I do. Someone should make me that t-shirt! I’ve been told when I am drinking I say it even more, so maybe Mel was onto something. Kidding! Even sober, I use it as a noun, an emphatic noun—a noun infused with texture. An especially special noun of endless possibilities. Sometimes women get offended—and say so, and I say that I am sorry that they don’t like the word. Granted I don’t have a revolutionary position about Bitch, you know, I got common sense. I’m not saying it at work. I’m not saying it’s a particularly popular word everywhere I go. I don't have to say it to someone if I know they hate to hear it, it's not like that. But I say it, I like it, I use and there would be no honesty in my apologizing for that. Whatever people want to conclude about my frame(s) of reference relative to theirs by my using that word is probably valid. What a novel idea—accountability for one’s usage of words… There is no question that once “Bitch” has come out of my mouth in regular conversation, in a sentence, that this has happened before. There is no question that I use it often. I can’t apologize for doing something I routinely do and mean it—cause everybody knows I’m gonna do it again. This is common fucking sense. So you say to me, well, then what can we do to heal? That’s stupid—we can’t heal from that shit. We can check bigots and make them feel ignorant. We can institute dire consequences to their usage of the slurs. Which is what needs to happen—we can make sure punishment happens. We can make sure our "collective" issues Reprimands of substance, like losing one’s job. Some bigots will take said punishment as a sign that they need to grow and learn shit and shut the fuck up until they have a clue. Others won’t take that at all. (Back to me, yeah, people have suggested, although generally they have mostly insinuated or said behind my back, that I could use some enlightenment vis a vis use of “bitch”; frankly, I don’t care).

The point is that as the swelling on Rodney King’s face suggested when he said that stupid line, we actually can’t all get along. Homophobes can’t get along with their gay coworkers. Racists can’t get along with their black audience members. Wife beaters can’t get along with their wives. My politically engaged anti-sexist feminist friends can’t get along with my using the word bitch left and right. The getting along here is way beside the point once the slur is out. The getting along requires that an innocent, targetted someone has to be put up to the undignified, self-loathing task of ACCEPTING your motherfucking apology. And I’ll be damned, bitch; I’ll be damned.

Immigration: Yall Are Still Funny!

2007-01-25T08:19:00.000-08:00

So whenever you send in an official form to Immigration, they send you back a receit. It has number and it states that they’ve received your form and—usually—the overpriced, non-refundable fee you sent in to submit said form. Then it states what the next steps are.

I’ve received my receipt for submitting my N-400—the meta-form, the form to end all forms, the citizenship form. And it has this hilarious line:

“You will be notified of the date and place of your interview when you have been scheduled by the local USCIS office. You should expect to be notified within 540 days of this notice.”

540 days? Who the hell says 540 days? I pulled out my calculator and realized that is 1.4 years, but only if you count a year as 365 days. But you know there are weekends so it’s really like the kind of math that made so my SAT scores sucked. Anyway--two years? Or something. I think the conversation when they were composing this form went something like:

“Don’t say two years. Sounds like too much! Sounds like we take too damn long. That would depress them. Just tell ‘em… 540 days!”

And then somebody high-fived somebody for their tact.

Anyway, this means I had better start studying for my Naturalization Exam, god knows it’s just around the corner. I’ve downloaded my study tools on-line, include the index card format...

Sample Questions--the almost petty ones:
What are the colors of our flag (I like the pre-emptive use of the “our” here!)
How many stars are there on our flag—and what color are the stars?
How many stripes—what color are the stripes?
What is the 4th of July?
(a sample follow-up is “Independence from whom?”)
Who is the President of the United States today?

But then there’s the tough ones:
What do we call a change to the Constitution?
How many changes or amendments are there?
(note that if I didn’t know the first answer, they just gave it to me in this question!)

They also have various ways to get at a topic, presumably based on how big a dumbass you are (which I think is very considerate; let's be frank, not every wannabe citizen will be smart--one can't control for that):
What is the Legislative branch? OR
Who makes the laws? OR
What is Congress? OR
What are the duties of Congress?

AND A Nancy Pelosi question here:
Who becomes president should the president and vice-president die?

AND an Obama question here:
According to the Constitution, a person must meet certain requirements in order to be eligible to become President. Name these requirements.

Porn & Crocodiles & Porn

2007-01-23T06:01:00.000-08:00

Porn
Apparently there IS justice in the world. so after all of this starvation and cosmetic cheating, here comes High Definition, making all the famous people freak out because rather than flatter them and hide their imperfections, HD makes everything—wrinkles, pimples, pores, bad plastic surgery, your age—more obvious than it would be to the naked eye. This is fascinatingly poetically just for many obvious reasons. It’s also yet another testament that we women pray at the altar of male chauvinism and general stupidity at our own peril: the starving and perfectionism is directly linked to a sexist world where men need perfect women to gawk at. We took that shit and ran with it way further than any man would have gone of course—we’ve actually “created” a man with an appetite for a skin and bones woman. Or did we? Maybe every dude just would like to get it on with an adolescent boy, just once, and well, Kate Bosworth and the like is pretty much like fucking an adolescent boy. But I digress. I mean that so we went and attempted these extremes for men. And now MEN, of course, gadget freaks that they are, need their HD. They need to see the proverbial stitching on the football! This most often quoted benefit of HD is particularly moronic, no? Who the fuck cares about the stitching on a ball anyway? It’s hardly the point. But technology, like everything, has to be a race. And in a male dominated dumbass world, every race has to me a massive race involving everybody. And it doesn’t matter what the end is as long as you get there first—so if we have HD for this, we have to have it for that and the other. Enter the Porno Industry. They are struggling now because HD is showing too much. The NY Times quotes some of the annoyed female porn starts who now have to put on even more tanning spray on their stretch marks, change positions to hide cellulite and even get plastic surgery to make the fake boobs less obviously fake—all because of HD. One such porno stars, the great Stormy Daniels herself, mentions that according to her, the worse thing is really razor burn. Razor burn! Can you imagine? ! Can you just like, NOT do the HD thing dudes? No? Wow. Razor burn it is then.

Crocodiles
I wish I could have done a seamless segway from that topic to this but I can’t. I’ll just say it: my son wants to be the next Crocodile Hunter. Yes, Steve Irwin is my son’s first real idol. Problem is, my son got turned out to Steve too late and now Steve is dead. Though my son now religiously watches him on Animal Planet, last Sunday, on the occasion of the (highly anticipated, marked on every calendar in our house) world premiere of Steve Irwin’s LAST adventure, “Ocean’s Deadliest” my son had a sort of emotional meltdown. At first he could not really contain his excitement at finally seeing this show he had been waiting to see since November when they announced it. As he put it, he thought the show would be “cool, like in the middle of cool” but as it turned out the show was “on the very top of cool”. The child was so excited, he became emotional. And more emotional still when towards the end, while sad music played and “testimonial” type footage aired, he remembered his hero was in fact, no more. He then started to cry uncontrollably, saying “I miss him, but I miss him.” It got particularly sad when Steve, looking dead into the camera, at the end of the show, gave his “best advice for my fans out there”. My son has informed me that he will be the next Crocodile Hunter, not only to do conservation of wildlife but also to console all the people (like himself!) who are devastated that Steve Irwin is gone. All jokes aside, if anybody has a better superhero for a kid, present it. You can’t actually beat the Crocodile Hunter. And yeah, even though you’re 30, you too sort of “miss him.” Needless to say, we’re ordering tons of DVDs and his Wildlife Warrior arm bands as soon as possible!

Porn
I have a Wahl Body Massager. It’s code for vibrator. But it is truly a body massager as well, with different pieces you can use. I’ve lately had much more use for it as massager for my feet and neck than as sex toy. In this capacity, my son found it. He asked to have his own back massaged. I innocently allowed this. Now my son is obsessed with this device. So I made him forget about it and put him on no massager rule. Recently (way long after the massager controversy had ended, I thought), I came home after his dad babysat him and he told me, triumphant, “Papa let me use the massager.” His dad was gone at that point and after my son went to bed, I called him to a) inform him about the background to the massager story and b) share with him the hilarity of my son’s triumphant face during the confession. So thinking my son was asleep, I called and was all “dumbass, you let him use the vibrator?” Cut to a couple days later and while I am cooking 3 things at the same time, my son’s mumbling some shit that makes no sense to me about can he do something or other. Usually when that happens and you’re busy, what you do is you ignore them altogether. Well suddenly this child screams, CAN I USE YOUR EVIBERATOR?! Pause. Collect Yourself. What?

Your Eviberator, can I use it please please please?

My what?

Eviberator!

What the hell is that?

The massager

(trying very HARD not to laugh) Then why are you calling it that?

You’re the one who called it an EVIBERATOR… when you were talking to Papa.

A Morning At The Service

2007-01-10T09:16:00.000-08:00

So my friends the penultimate chapter in my pursuit, not of Happiness (with an I, Will Smith, with an I, not a Y!) but of Citinzeness is completed as of this morning. I had to go get my fingerprints done by Immigration or as I like to call it, The Service. The new name for INS never caught on by the way. Who the hell is going to remember USCIS for United States Citizenship and Immigration Service, Homeland Security? INS made sense and was very close to IRS and part of the culture. USCIS just sounds like a college...

Last time they fingerprinted me was like a minute ago. Really what could I have done since then? And if you've never gone, you don't know, but this ain't your momma's fingerprinting. This is a state of the art FBI thing that involves a fat lady rooooooooooling each invidual finger of yours onto a glass pad, and waiting for the computer to tell her that the picture is okay. If there are interruptions in the picture, like cracks, she has to do it again. Sometimes the cracks are because you have dry skin, in which case, she has to give you lotion and look at you fucked up like you farted at her or something. Sometimes the lady is mean and really squeezes your finger hard when doing it or yells at you for no reason. The lady's job is really dumb right? So generally she also routinely has to act like YOU are dumb and like YOU don't know how to do this thing. So she'll say things like "no ma'am" "stop it, stop it, stop it", "move over here, (sigh), NO here, you're standing in the wrong place", etc.

This would all be well and good if I was actually DOING something-anything at all-but I'm not, bitch, you are the one holding my thumb and rolling it on your computerized glass pad cause that's your dumbass job that's pissing you off and I would have sympathized but turns out you're a bitch so fuck you. I say "the lady" generically because they truly are all the same lady. Pissed off and mean clones of each other. The lady made a face like there's bad milk in the fridge to say the usual, "What the-where IS IT that you're from again?!". I'm used to this one so I don't even care: "Cape Verde". "Whaaaaat?". "CAPE.VERDE. Like Cape Cob but Verde and in West Africa, under C in the scroll down menu there". "Oh, thanks. Never heard of it." Bitch you ain't never heard of a lot of things like knowing when to shut the fuck up and not make a stinky face when you don't know geography. Like it's my fault that I was not born in Ethiopia or South Africa, the only two African nations you know, courtesy of the Bible and Oprah respectively. Oh snap, that was racist!

Speaking of racist, let me tell you about the perversion of The Service.
This is always observed whenever you deal with them and it is the number one reason your ass wants to never deal with them again: the immigration service is populated exclusively by the biggest assholes in America. I mean people who refuse to say please and thank you. People who yell at adults. People who treat everyone as a mentally retarded person when 9 out of 10 times, they are the densest, dumbest motherfuckers in the room. People who talk like they have a hearing impediment combined with tourettes:

"Ma'am you're not not listening to me. Ma'am. Ma'am. Ma'am. No. No. No.Stop. No. No", is typically what they say to you while you are trying to explain something to them. That's never possible. You can't explain. You have to bring the right paperwork and that's it. If you don't have the shit in your hand you get the line above. Generally without eye contact. These people are truly foul and make you feel like an extra in the movie "Amistad" the moment, and I mean the moment you walk into the building. Today when I walked into the building, I mean literally the glass doors opened and I took one step and reached inside my pocket and the security yelled.

"Ma'am the line starts HERE."

"Uh, I just walked in and was just..."

"The line is HERE. Not THERE. HERE"

"...taking out my cell phone..."

"Ma'am, sign says NO CELL PHONES"

"...to turn it off. Why are you yelling?"

"THE LINE Ma'am. THE LINE"

"(Silence.)"

Silence you say? Why did you not curse him out? That's a stupid natural born citizen question to ask. These are the Feds. Not just the federales but the migra. You don't say shit to them. My asking why he was yelling was me not thinking clearly because I had no coffee. Usually you just think "yes massah" in your head and smile humbly when the abuse happens. If it merits that you cry, you cry. But you don't talk back to the Service. No, no, no. Because you lose an appointment and your ass is toast. You can't leave the country and you can't do shit until another appointment is set-up. So you take their shit. Which they know you will, which is why they do it.

The perversion thickens though. Because a) all of this 21st Century slave ship strife occurs under a neverending succession of photos of Bush and Cheney. Like yearbook pictures of these fools, everywhere. Grinning. In front of the flag. Dude, come on: is this Dante's Immigration Service? Must you torture us for your amusement? But the worse perversion is of course the fact that the asshole personnel is all "of color", and "foreign origin", usually who speak with the thickest accents and come from places where customer service as a concept is well, *not* a concept. Places like my homeland, for instance. This is perversion to the point of scary-brilliant. Because on the one hand, this racist circus is populated by non-whites, thus the immediate harshness and fuckedupedness is masked by being delivered by "your own" to you (an old, very familiar colonial administration model by the way, 200 yr old United States-you ain't doing shit to us we've all not seen before!).

But, on the other hand, this chorus of barely intelligible English coming out of the mouths of extremely rude and unhelpful immigrants really works well to enforce any racist customer's predisposed antipathy towards...well, immigrants and people with accents. It is a bonus that while these two rabbits are killed with one shot, a third rabbit gets it too, because we the immigrants truly develop a profound comtempt for those of us who work for immigration and partake in this fucking travesty. The whole time you're sitting there, putting up with abuse, watching people putting up with probably worse abuse, hearing insulting behavior, you just want to go up to one of the sistahs and the bwethas and say WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM?! (And why do you already have papers and I don't bitch?!). But if you did that you know the Klansman who runs the Service and still wears the white sheet to work would come out of his back end office and... cancel your appointment for that day and send you back to the automated appointment system. And that would be fucked up.

Losing the Way, Touching the Ground

2007-01-03T13:43:00.001-08:00

if you are an immigrant then you might know this feeling. when I go home to cape verde there is a moment where I wish (against reason) that I could throw up my arms around my island and hug it tight to my heart. usually that happens when the plane lands. it lands in this nook of the island, fully surrounded by mountains, where the airport is. it’s a corner that is drenched in the two-toned color scheme that defines the place for me: deep reddish clay, bare mountains and electric blue sky. it is like these two brown hands of land are joined, cupping the bluest air, waiting for me and my plane to come. short of hugging the entire island of sao vicente which is impossible, I just reach down and touch the ground. I don’t kiss it because that is what jean paul the second used to do and that would look weird, but I always want to—I always almost do. but even just the motion does the trick. the ground is always very hot, the energy from it to me, always palpable that way. there is also a smell—fresh sea smell I would call it. the whole thing is but 20 seconds but they matter so much these seconds of touching the ground. last night they said in the news that homesickness is a real disease. that it can be sometimes; times where it gets so bad that little kids can’t function, won’t eat, won’t sleep. I don’t know if that meant this only applied to children. in cape verdean there is a word for homesickness and longing, called sodade. it is the central motif of a great deal of our artistic expression; typical for an immigrant people from an island place. disease or not, existing in a foreign place is stressful particularly in times, like right now, where the bonds to that foreign place are seeming more and more tenuous. I am pretty sure this is not a real crisis but a predictable psychological response: I don’t think I’m truly desperately homesick and lost here. I just think I’m lost and thus self-suggested myself into homesickness. It is after all, a legitimate disease for people like me to suffer from and lately, as I continue to wake up in states of the utmost profound sadness, I keep looking for legitimating narratives, as a social worker might say. I thought I was done feeling self-conscious about what I feel. clearly not. I know that I can’t go home, firstly because it wouldn’t be a good move for my son. My son could not survive such a drastic change in his life right now and I could not shoulder helping him through yet another, in this case, super traumatic “adjustment.” and I couldn’t take him from his father, regardless of what challenges their relationship currently faces. but being here is not making any sense either and I don’t feel that I can continue much longer in my neither here nor there state. I did not envision a time I would not be anchored in my relationship with him writ large, if not my relationship conceived specifically. I am unable to let go simply because I am unable. I feel unequipped for being alone in the world, and I feel the world is very vast and very foreign and not my own right now. and before, right or wrong, I was part of something and I had a family and I was becoming part of this place but now, everything is slipping away. and I feel completely dislocated and out of references and markers for what the hell I am doing. everyone underestimates everything: they underestimate how much I am struggling, how sad I am, how often I cry, how long this’s been going on, what fundamental weight it all bears and how much I just want him back. how much I’d rather not have things be this way. how much in fact, I am only judging by degree of distress; how much I am concluding that if it feels this bad then it must not be for the better. I don’t make an effort to correct anybody’s underestimations either—here we go back to my sense that there are expectations and rules and parameters for what I can and cannot wish or want or do. the difference is that in the past I would harbor along with the shame for (still) wanting him back, a regret that I wasn’t in fact, this strong self-sufficient woman who would not, in fact want him back. in the past I would be the self-admitted loser. this time, not even. I don’t aspire to a sense of resolve or closure I don’t have. sure, I’d rather not be suffering, but that’s subtly different from my saying “I’d rather not want him back.” I just do. It is a fact. If it is a result of confusion, panic, lack of common sense, maturity, etc, I can’t know. I won’t know. I can only sit with my own feelings. still, he won’t even talk to me. I could take that to mean that this then, is settled, irrespective of what I want/wish for. and if it is, again, the question arises: what the hell it is that I am doing here, in my life, at this particular time, in this place? and the answer feels like it would be “nothing”. and if that’s the case then I should go home. part of it is because this turn of events makes no sense to me. part of it is because I would like to run away, of course, but moms can’t “run away”. but part of it is just because home is a place where at least you don’t have to have a reason to be in order to be; at home you are simply expected to be. and you belong, no matter what. and if you lose your way, you can also reach down and touch ground. you always know what you are doing when you’re home. and if you don’t, that’s fine: you could stay there until you figure it out.

I Want To Cry At The Opera

2006-11-29T11:57:00.000-08:00

I’m trying to get into opera bit by bit. I like music, so I like it. I want to be like those people that cry at the opera. But I am not there yet. I’ve written about this before but again: I think aside from my some genuine interest in being as cultured as possible (not in some vacuous sense of wanting to impress at some cocktail party, in the real sense), my art is really pop culture. Film of course, and books, of course. And songs. Pop songs, rock songs, song songs. Shit that plays or played on radio. The full range. I don’t cry at the opera yet but I can cry at Michael Jackson's Human Nature for a myriad reasons. It's hard to get through Springsteen's The River. I cry at Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now, at this particular moment in life. Not the original but the one she re-recorded with the full orchestra, on the Both Sides Now album. The breathy one, that lays over all her years. I think when she wrote the song she didn’t know it so well as she does when she sings it in this version. Joni Mitchell singing this on this album is way older than me, My mother used to listen to her “Coyote” when I was little; it’s one of the main ways that we discovered I could understand English for no apparent reason. We were Cape Verdeans living in Belgium. I was in 2 or 3rd grade. All my English was from my parents’ music. She was trying to sing it, playing her guitar and getting stuck. And I came over and helped by basically singing the song’s first verse, which she was struggling to understand. "No regrets Coyote, We just come from such different sets of circumstance, I'm up all night in the studios, And you're up early on your ranch,You'll be brushing out a brood mare's tail, While the sun is ascending, And I'll just be getting home with my reel to reel..." Certainly is on my top ten childhood memories.

If she is older and I relate, then I too, when I am older will hear the song all over again for the first time. I wish I could sing but I can’t—so I listen. I imagine, about lyrics and poems and pieces of prose that they are a merry-go-round that binds us. And that we all take a turn watching it go by, unengaged. Then suddenly we get kicked and fall into line, into the circle going around. And as we take our place in it, we say: I know this circle’s arc, I recognize this rhythm, I am a part of this. It’s amazing when the kick is say, your first love. Or your first child. It’s not so amazing when the kick is from pain, or from knowing things that hurt, I guess. Still, I suppose feeling alive and in motion and connected should be its own reward. It is better to feel as though you fall into line with a larger expansive woman experience that has been witnessed by others than to feel you’re in a lonely free fall. Art (in this case, my Joni Mitchell song) does that, it is that merry-go-round testimony. I think having almost not made it past 21, and having lived many years completely disconnected from myself, I’ll always recognize that the moments when it clicks that you are alive and your circumstances not unique (like when I watched “Volver” recently) is a kind of ultimate good. Maybe that’s why some people cry at the opera.

Both Sides, Now

By Joni Mitchell

Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons evrywhere
Ive looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on evryone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
Ive looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its cloud illusions I recall
I really dont know clouds at all

Moons and junes and ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As evry fairy tale comes real
Ive looked at love that way

But now its just another show
You leave em laughing when you go
And if you care, dont let them know
Dont give yourself away

Ive looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
Its loves illusions I recall
I really dont know love at all

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say I love you right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
Ive looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say Ive changed
Well somethings lost, but somethings gained
In living evry day

Ive looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
Its lifes illusions I recall
I really dont know life at all
Ive looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its lifes illusions I recall
I really dont know life at all

The Prayer

2006-11-16T10:13:00.000-08:00

The Prayer

I put my hands, both
Through the air: digging without searching
There are ten things I did today and will do tomorrow
But will never admit having done

I wish there were always persons to bear witness to that
To fashion me robes with which to masquerade my conscience
To incite me to the rituals of purpose
When I’d rather just dig for nothings
Just me and the air and the places the two meet
Punctuating things
Looking for interlocution from this purely tactile
Suspended dance between myself and space
Like someone banging stones to make fire without much conviction

I pull my hands, both
Back out of the air: they are all drenched
In something I cannot see but can taste

Definitions

2006-10-30T11:46:00.000-08:00

to ebb

1. intr. To flow back or recede, as the water of the sea or a tidal river: frequent in phrase, to ebb and flow.

2. b. transf. Of a ship: To sink with the tide. Of water: To sink lower. Of blood: To flow away.

3. 2. fig. To take a backward or downward course; to decay, decline; to fade or waste away

to flow

I. To glide along as a stream.
1. a. intr. Of fluids, a stream, etc.: To move on a gently inclined surface with a continual change of place among the particles or parts; to move along in a current; to stream, run; to spread over (a surface)
b. Opposed to ‘stand’
c.Of the blood or other animal fluids: To pass along the vessels of the body; to circulate.
d. With advbs. to flow over = to overflow.
e. quasi-trans. Of a river: To carry down (water) in its current.

2. a. To become liquid; to stream down, melt

I like definitions. Sometimes I like them because my immigrant ass truly needs them. But other times it's interesting to check the nuance of meanings. I knew what these words meant. But currently, it’s fascinating to realize certain submeanings. That the word ebb also is about sinking, that related to blood it means to flow away; also it has the idea of a downward decaying course, of fading and of wasting. And that flow also is about spreading over a surface (to me, that means thinning), sustained change (to me, that means exhausting), the opposite of standing (to me, that means instability) and that it can mean to circulate (around in circles?), or to overflow (runneth over). And a great one: to melt.

Fight or flight. I feel like I should run home to Cape Verde rather than be stuck in this version of my life. Sometimes. Especially on Mondays. Other times I feel like that would be cowardice. Then I play Madonna’s Jump and dance around my living room and I feel this breath of possible power just cresting but then I just fizzle. I’m fucking exhausted. In part cause I was dancing to Madonna’s Jump for 20 minutes (replay replay replay) but in part because I’m exhausted and I don’t want to feel this anymore.

The Corner

2006-10-30T11:39:00.000-08:00

Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Laureate, upon hearing for the zillionth time that his claim to fame was to bridge the gap between East and West through his writing yesterday said something like, “The metaphor of the bridge is so antiquated; my responsibility is to build new metaphors.”

It is indeed almost impossible to not construct these spatial metaphors for life: the journey, the trip, the bridge, the gap and the monument—be it mountain or tower or pyramid. I think it says something about humanity’s innate Creator complex, and central investment on building its destiny. Let’s face it, the Buddhist way of just being who and where you are is not as attractive as the Master of the Universe way of “if you can make it there, you’ll make it, anywhere, so here’s to you, New York, New York” . I would venture that we all have a little Genesis story inside: clay molding of ourselves. Destination: happiness. My metaphor exercise of the day is The Corner.

The corner of the world that I come from being so small, having allowed me such an expanse of choices and array of mistakes because I was invisible to most maps. A corner of the world particularly inflated with romantic, heightened expectations about the exceptionality of my life, my golden promise of making things impossible possible. This because I was told all the time that my being here was already tremendously miraculous. Everything I survived before coming to New York was proof positive I could survive anything. The Corner of the world that I come from could be extremely sheltered and brutal at the same time, thus making it hard to discern the my true limits and true potential. For better or worse.

The corner as the place where he has now returned to, to be that which many people like him are, a hustler. It is a place that contrary to the rest of the world, attributes him due praise, fame and fortune, at least as possibilities. A place where he is not just a man trying to make it, but The Man. A place where he can apply himself to something he likes to do, and does well, and reap predictable returns and provide for himself. Provide for himself a measure of contextualized dignity. The necessities of life. The fuel with which to put one foot in front of the other. The corner where he gets respite from the sense of continued failures. Where he gets the comforts of the familiar. The corner as a dead end place pretending to be a transitional place for so many men, for so very long. It has codes, uniforms, hierarchies, outposts and traffic-ridden paths. It has the tropes of everything else that lies beyond it. It has risk-benefit analyses predicated on very specific ethics (like instant gratification). It has life: a new girlfriend, new friends, laughs again, drunken nights, rowdy moments and quieter moments, a lot of weed, new beginnings, new ends. And, one would hope, dreams. And one would hope to not have to qualify or judge those dreams, one day, if that were possible. But for that to be possible one would have to be of that corner and I just am not. The Corner gets to have him in the end.

The Corner where he first kissed me, the corner of 122nd Street and Riverside Drive. There’s a fence there. If you lean on it, because a man gently pushed you, your heels hit a ledge on the sidewalk and you naturally step up so as to be slightly taller. He propped me up those couple inches, leaned in, and quite frankly, kissed me in a way that changed everything. I have razor sharp connection back to that corner moment. There is a whole person I would not be that begins with that corner moment; there is certainly a first instance of womanhood and self-worth and confidence and. I own that corner forever irrespective of what it comes to mean for him or not mean for him. It's interesting to generate meanings with someone that only you yourself come to understand. But that first kiss corner is fundamental for me. I get to have that corner in the end.

The Corner for what it feels like to hear that he has moved on and is happy. Where I feel I was left standing, stranded, all my bags laying there and no ride home. No home to ride to. Now all my stuff, the stuff of these seven years, is just out here on this corner, subject to the elements, various degrees of deterioration, and when all of it dissolves like paper in water, I do not have more of it in some storage space. The corner where I am left to contemplate this depletion of my resources, this my waste, this my loss.

And finally, today, 79th Street and West End Avenue. Crisp and cold but sunny. The day where it all sinks in. I did not choose this. I was brought here by my life (kicking and screaming) but there is no use fighting maps just because you cannot see them and now suspect they may not exist. I’m not New York City, I am not a numerated, structured maze. I am not incrementally growing when I head North and losing when I head South. I am not beholden to solving a problem, simplifying this life algebra. I don’t really know much standing on this corner, waiting for the light to change. But I am ready to cross the street.

The Problem of Articulation

2006-10-13T12:02:00.000-07:00

I come in I sit in the leather chair. Everything looks the same but the furniture has shifted east slightly. She looks thinner—better maybe. I notice that this is the earliest session I ever had, at 8:30, and yet she is dressed very well, the same way she would dress at the other sessions, but I didn’t notice it then.

I look at her face and she greets me and I realize that I would have recognized her in a crowd but not as my shrink. I would have said hi and not known where I knew her from. I think that it’s been a while since I’ve been here but I have no idea how long. I have trouble with so many of the details and timing of the last 3 years or so. Last 5 years or so?

When was the last time I was here?

It’s been a couple of years.

And I know last time I was here it was something to do with him but what was it?

You had just put him out of your house.

And then I start to cry very hard.

You’ve been in and talked about some horrible, very difficult things, and you’ve never cried like this. What do you think about that?

I think to myself that this sort of line of questioning is why I, for the first time, avoided coming to therapy. It’s also the reason why I came anyway. And then I think to myself, two fucking years?

My problem with my problems has always been one of articulation. I know that even the idea that I can trace the origin of something as illusory as “my problem with problems” is…a problem, but this is what I do. So to tracing it back:

My first encounter with the little hell that can be one’s life was through the dysfunctions of my early childhood. I was what I today would call a severely emotionally neglected child. That still sounds a bit extreme when I say it but I feel that it is true. A few years back I wouldn’t use the terms because I thought they were too harsh. Now I know it’s not that, they are not too harsh, they just don’t give enough nuance. It is hard to properly describe but essentially I was being damaged, emotionally, as a kid, on a consistent basis. In that time I was told by my mother (the primary on the case) and it was confirmed by the rest of my (her) family that there was a reason for this pain I was enduring. My mother was a teenager who had been “forced” to have me at a very young age, thus becoming emotionally stunted and bitter and unable to do any better than she was doing—but she loved me. Yes adults thought wise to tell a child this.

I can’t lie: it made sense to me. She’s a mess but that’s not my fault. She treats me like shit but that’s not her fault. They said she can’t help herself: after all, she didn’t want to have a kid. No 16 year old wants to have a kid. Now what can she do? Pretend to be a grown up? She can’t do that. She must be this fucked up selfish person, she's never grown up, they said. I was happy to have A Reason since I didn’t have much else going on. I realize now that I grew up strung out on reasons. This is what my therapy is often about: me chasing reasons like a fiend. Life, it turns out, is deeply unreasonable.

There being A Reason began to connect quickly with There being No Reason For me to complain. Why complain if I knew the whole reason was... nobody's fault? I was told that was just a selfish thing to do, and something beneath me since I was such a precocious, good child. I knew better than complaining.

Today: pain is never articulated. For me it’s metaphor, always. Pictures. Pain never is what it is, for me it is like something else. Today it still needs to be distilled or costumed to safely sneak into the world. Back in the day it couldn't come out at all. First it was like something that went up my throat and burned at the top of it, enough that nothing came out, no words. Just tears. And the tears, because of the burning, would be very hot on my face. And my face would get very hot and then I would get dizzy from the heat. Like motion sickness but while feeling immobilized. That was when I was little. But to this day there is a way in which I have trouble being hurt and saying so and if I muster up all that it takes then likely my head will start to burn up—it’s probably not real, say, to the touch. But I feel it burning.

Then a second phase where I discovered there was a "silent" way of speaking, and it was writing. Now pain was many images in my poems. An exit sign falling out of sight. A vacant temple raided by traceless people. Murder before morning time. Blood running down to the feet. Picnics with ghosts. And other images I can't remember. Precise ones. All evocative but with time, they are evocative only of a memory of having not felt the pain but of having expressed it well in poetry. I can't remember the way the pain felt, I just remember how the poem said the pain felt. The connecting theme here: distance and control. And not articulating the pain, just thoughts about the pain. Narrative. Words. Stories of why and where and when and especially a lot of stories of what next.

When therapy became a part of my life I could do a lot with it but not articulate the unallowable. I confronted then this problem of articulation. Feelings, you know, they need to make sounds. I am learning this right now when I am 30 years old. I feel like I learned it before and it was so messy that I forgot it deliberately. And yet here I was swearing up and down that all the lessons learned in the psych hospital had stuck. But not really: I had transformed all that real emotional work into really good "psych ward" stories to tell while drunk, but forgot the fundamental insight I attained there. Which is that what is inside making you hurt must come out of you, hot cheeks, dizzy head, terror, and all. You didn't control the coming in of the darkness, so you won't get to control the coming out.

Today I had a therapy session where I felt out of control for the entire hour. I did not know what I would say before I said it. I did not know how I would sound to myself and I was terrified. I felt like an idiot, I couldn't come up with any words really. So I cried and told myself, I gotta watch that next time around, I don’t feel like fucking crying in this lady’s office, this sucks.

The same's been happening at home. I have been crying a lot. I have been hurting in an audible way and it freaks me out. You have to cry into the pillow because it is very loud. Or crouch down like you are hiding from some horrible monster that's coming. Make sure your back is on a wall so you don't get jumped. Cover your head. Sit still in a corner for a whole hour and don’t notice it go by. All you can do is stop at the point where you are exhausted. I know I’m supposed to be articulating without the metaphors but just this once: sometimes it’s like a supernova of your insides, where it feels like your skin might burst at the seams; but, at the same time, all the air around you turns into these heavy things that are crushing you. So if something could be exploding and caving at the same time, and if that thing was you. If that happened, you’d have to sit and cry it out. Open your mouth. And not let it be done to you in silence anymore.
It’s just you and your life: you need no euphemisms. You are not faint of heart.

Mama Africa

2006-10-02T07:57:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine who is an AIDS treatment activist working in Lesotho (and more generally, a human rights activist focused in Africa) wrote me an e-mail about what work is like currently in the village she is at. Her e-mail included great news about their setting up some farming systems and self-sustaining bio-responsible systems for the village that involve among other things I don’t understand, dual purpose chickens. It was fascinating. Chickens would lay eggs (duh!) and those would be sold in the local market and the closest nearby grocery and then the funds from that would go towards the cost of living and caring for the village AIDS orphans, which are numerous and in the care of a “care group”. And at some point in that cycle the chickens would eventually also become food, thus the dual purpose.

In speaking to my friend I often feel the worse part of my African guilt, which I won’t get into now but obviously as the name suggest has to do with my being an African who isn’t in fact, a human rights activist focused on Africa.

She was talking to me about all kinds of terrible realities and then focused on a very real problem she perceives rightly to be a huge impediment to good work in terms of AIDS—a seemingly “cultural” resistance to treatment and acceptance of this massive death rate. Her prior work had been in South Africa, in the context of a very active and hardcore grassroots patients’ rights campaign by the organization TAC. Her current work is in a village in Lesotho where folks are not that engaged. She said to me in part:

"But, work here is so very frustrating…. working here is entirely different to working in South Africa (or at least being at TAC.) There is absolutely no sense of urgency here… do you know what I mean? I mean that, coming here I knew all about the statistics—one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the entire world and a very high death rate to accompany that, a huge AIDS orphan population, and high rates of unemployment. What I did not expect to find was a (dare I say…) apathetic population who are largely too scared to talk about HIV, let alone test for it, and who would rather go to funerals every single fucking Saturday, rather than stare into the face of the pandemic that has swept their country. The population is just under 2 million and 66% is youth and children… there are 200,000 orphans (10% of the population…yes, 10% of the pop is an orphaned child….isn’t that insane?) The group with the highest rates of HIV infection is women 25-29 years old, 40% of whom are HIV positive. 40 PERCENT!"

And she wrote also about struggling to understand where that apathy came from:
"The thing is that I remarked on this lack of urgency right away, but sort of tried to understand it in its own cultural context… I don’t know if it’s part of the culture—this inherent understanding of the impermanence of life and the unquestioning acceptance of that fact, or what. But, I am struck daily by the lack of urgency with which people deal with this public health crisis. Not in a judgmental sense more in a sociological sense. The Basotho are now attending a funeral every single Saturday, the current life expectancy (debatable) is 35 years of age, there are close to 200,000 orphan children living in a country with a population of just 1,800,000, the central market of Mafeteng town is full of coffin-makers, makers of coffins for every size corpse.”

And about the challenges for women’s ability to negotiate their own (sexual) health:
"I know it sounds naïve, but I think that a society, any society, can not claim to be enlightened, until a woman (the average woman) can negotiate sexuality with her partner. Is the U.S. enlightened, in this sense? Again, we all know that there are “two Americas.” For women of my cohort, yes, I think I can say that yes, they can indeed and most often, do. However, the HIV/AIDS epidemic would not be spreading as fast as it is amongst many populations in the U.S., if this were the case for all American women."

And finally, about the hurdle created by the “traditional” healers:
" A traditional healer who makes one feel comfortable, provides care, attention and emotional support, or prescribes indigenous herbs as remedies for illnesses is not only acceptable and permissible, but actually it is essential for successfully combating HIV/AIDS and the multiple ways it attacks society. The human resources crisis is so intense in the health sector in Lesotho and in most Southern African countries that there are not even enough healthcare workers to test, treat, and care for AIDS patients. Traditional healers have an advantage in that they are usually trusted and respected by the community and they can take time with each patient. If treatment activists could effectively collaborate or ally with one another, both recognizing their shared interests and the collective benefits of partnership, to deal with the public health crisis, there would be a creative synergy as opposed to a dangerous and distracting dichotomy... [Unfortunately] There still exist “witch doctors” who advise that HIV can be cured by having sex with a virgin (or worse yet, a small child) or who prescribe cutting the patient to “clean” the blood.”

Not easy stuff to deal with. And as an African, not easy stuff to hear in way. Because I know my friend is a toughtful and committed person and if the reality on the ground is what it is, then the conclusions that she draws are legitimate. But of course they are not legitimate to me because I refuse to believe certain things. I tried to tell her and think for myself about another angle on this issue.

It seems to me (and I have the advantage of actually *not* looking at coffin makers in the markets every day) that people can only be who they are. And that adversity alone does not change that--various various circumstances have to converge for people to rise up in their own "defense" so to speak--nevermind to do it successfully, in a way that is not self-destructive and pointless in the end. Whether we're talking Lesotho or America. I think hindsight is 20/20 and we often get this linear thinking that connects going through hardship with rising up in a social movement and we forget how many other ways the story goes. I'm sure there's a so-called complacency in the people, but there is one here as well--there is that everywhere.

All the time, my feeling about Africa is always that the DISASTERS (all of them, civil strife, genocides, droughts and famines and AIDS) are so extreme that the rest of the world comes to expect exceptional human behavior from Africans in response. The world looks at that continent and expects that Africans—against human type and norm--be strong and stand up for themselves in dire circumstances, that they resist corruption and violence and other normal human inclinations under strife, that they shake off their own cultural context and trust Westerners, that the women negotiate rights they do not have and never have had, that they opt out of their medicine in favor of another from people who have never done much for them-- another medicine they simply don't understand.

It seems not fair an expectation but I hear it in people’s frustration with “Africa”. Even I fall prey to that. In the end, whether "we" Africans (and I put the quotes on the we fully aware that there's all kind of Africans) are dying in massive numbers or not, we are only ordinary people. Like everybody else. We are no more willing or inclined to face a pandemic than the next person say, in the States, who is unwilling to face that their government is a nefarious influence in the world; that their country systematically condemns millions to "Africa-like" poverty and despair though it calls itself a democracy; that not getting tested for HIV or not wearing a condom is really dumb.

I think people are always afraid and excepting very few individuals (like my friend and others like her, all over the world whose work is about human rights) prefer to cling to the notion that they should get a break and be allowed to "just live a happy life" without having to get into a fight for the death about it. Or without having to change the way they've lived. Or something. I think that it would be actually odd if folks in Africa were anything but aclimated to the idea of premature death and other loss. You know? It seems contradictory but I think it’s about a reaffirmation of a whole continent’s humanity that we can’t get it together—how could we get it together? WHO could get it together under the circumstances Africa is under? Personally, I'm scared to even visit certain places in the world and see life in certain states of disarray. I’m still devastated that I let myself watch the Frontline special on the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. That's how much I am naturally inclined to run from that shit and I'm not even at stake; I don’t live there.

I think on a positive note, that people like my friend make a huge difference. Cumulatively. If you read about movements, all kinds of movements and currents of change, they start very very quietly and small and so slow. Way before there's something on the radar of "world history", or something that can be spun into "a book" or an entry in wikipedia or a movie with Denzel Washington and what not—way before that, there's people like my friend and the villagers she is collaborating with, and the health professionals, doing day to day work. And working in the face of odds that would make most people just sit and weep and walk away. There's people who use their place slightly outside of that despair to come and shake things up a little bit and say there should be another way to deal. But you can’t expect someone living and eating and breathing that despair to just up and say, oh today I’m going to be hopeful and combative and proactive about this. Today I’m going to affect change in my life that has an expectancy of 35 years. I think it’s not fair to expect anything from a human being who is not allowed to expect to live past 35.

It's going to take everything (from grassroots local stuff, to international human rights activism stuff, to science, to medicine, to money to government to sheer luck and the graces of the gods) to correct the path of the African continent, and when I personally think of that, that terrifies me because I don't think what happens in Africa upsets enough people. Is it because the place is so damn fucked up every which way or is the place that fucked up because most people don't care about the place? Pointless chicken and egg question, but it does come back to the notion of complacency, doesn't it? Just because my friend can't see sometimes how the work that she is doing is affecting the larger scheme, it doesn't mean it's not.

But in the same way, just because we can't see a visible and familiar manifestation of a people's anger or resilience or will to live, it doesn't mean it's not there. It doesn't mean they don't care. Every day life can speak its own (fucked up) truths to us and what happens really becomes "all that can happen" but I refuse to believe there is inclination, anywhere in Africa, irrespective of what we think we understand about the people, towards letting themselves just die off. Because fundamentally that makes no sense. Human beings just are not built that way.

It occurred to me something when I was thinking about what she wrote me about complacency that a comparison of sorts could be made to the mid east and suicide bombers. I suppose they could be considered to be the ultimate "non-complacent" people, in a sense. But we all know that what they do with their despair has another profound human tragedy quotient as well. I think the root of it is the same, right? An acceptance of death at the hand of unjust circumstances, a resting of hopes in false witch doctoring prophets, a disenfranchised human being's own inadequate "adjustment" to a fucked up fate. If someone internalizes all of that and decides to blow themselves up in a bus vs if they just decide to die quietly in a village in Lesotho--which is better for whom? Which rattles the conscience of the world? Some would say neither if the conscience of the world can’t be bothered. Having posed the hypothetical question, I am full aware that the question itself is immoral. Just like the realities in the question are just immoral: human beings just should have the right to better options than a pointless death.

I get “Africa frustration” all the time. Especially when I am thinking about corrupt governance, “war lords”, child soldiers, rapes and ethnic genocides and all of that shit. I often have those un-PC thoughts of “how fucked up are you people, goddamn?!”—but I have those same thoughts about my people in Africa as I have about my people in the ghettoes of American cities. And in both counts they’re not real convictions, just the rude frustration. Same as when I lose it with my son and accidentally curse at him. Symptomatic of my exasperation but not my conviction. Fact is that if it is true that poverty breeds dysfunction and that the two are proportionate, imagine if ALL of America was the lower 9th ward of New Orleans or West Baltimore or DC or the South Bronx? Imagine if all the people here lived in the same conditions that some live in the reservations? If all of that dysfunction was not imbedded in this hugely wealthy, hugely expansive country whose government more or less controls the world? What would this country really look like? And further, what would its people look like for "putting up with it"? Pretty culturally inclined to apathy and complacency, I think…

Campus Life

2006-09-28T06:58:00.000-07:00

I think in the end, I like working in a University. Beyond my obvious need to remain in the academic environment I was not able to actually enter as a graduate student as was The Plan, I have a genuine affinity for the place. There are things that I like about it more and more with time, and I'm not just saying this to make the possibility of staying here until retirement so my child can attend college for free more palatable to me. For instance I like to work in education but I don't like to teach, so higher education administration suits me. It has a pedagogical component that does not involve the actual classroom--my work is more rooted in the places where the classroom melds with the rest of the students' lives here (this melding often being a place of chaos, for better or worse, and a place I remember well). It is, I think, inspiring sometimes, to get to observe the coming of age of young people. Personally it provides a depth of perception about my own (still on-going) coming of age. Beyond that, it's as good a mission as any other that one could be a part of. Young people are very peculiar and it amazes me every day, in a good way, that I was once that peculiar.

For instance, they really argue about shit with anybody who will argue back. They sit at tables mid-campus and engage white haired right wing professors about "Palestine". They hand out Conservative Union flyers about a talk entitled The Minutemen: Racists or Patriots? They write for and deligently distribute a newsletter based on "the writings and philosophy" of Ayn Rand. As second year students--that's like what? 19 years old--they use words like hegemony and heterosexist paradigm in their campus paper columns. They completely have the strength of their convictions, even if the conviction is that they should be able to switch their entire schedule of classes late in the term because they've discovered that they "absolutely have to take History of Fashion" (true statement, true course--I didn't make that up). They are more alike that they would think or admit--whether they think it's their daddy's bick bucks or their position of relative socio-economic and racial underpriviledge vis a vis students from the upper class that is at the root of it, they all think the universe revolves around them. They also all have no idea how fast time flies or how young they really are or how many more time they will be able to really fuck up in life before it catches up to them.

I mean no condescension whatsover--this is all genuine appreciation. I am sure it relates to my sense of loss for not having been able to fully bask in the light of all I describe above. It also probably relates to how much of what I describe above is still very much me, as 30, in fact, is not exactly old. Things were never simple when I was younger, so it's not nostalgia: I am well aware that 18-22 can be fucking tough fucking years. It's just you know, when you work and to an extend live among them, you get a sense that the concept of "future" is real, insofar as people are in the world today, with you, whose perspective is completely different, whose possibilities (whether they know it or not) are completely different, whose "world history parameters" are completely different. We have a big dissident from the communist block coming to visit our campus and most students have no clue, not only about who he is, but about that whole history. They are post 9/11, they use terms like terrorism without quotations marks around it (for the most part) , they were born in the late 80's--you know that's post "Thriller" and "E.T." Beirut meant nothing to them until this past September.

Part of the pace of things that their "existence" (and its various expressions, like say, the carrying around of not one, not two but three electronic communication devices at a time) suggests can be daunting or depressing--it can appear to be a "lack" of proper context and to the extent that a lot of Americans irrespective of age are sheltered and uninformed about world affairs, some of that is problematic. But some of it is not; it just points us in the direction of something very real, which is the limits of a life. The primacy of the current reality of a life. The importance of stopping long enough to recognize a certain peculiarity to oneself, one's moment in time, one's being 18 in New York in 2006--which is unlike one's being anyone else anywhere else. I find that inspiring and liberating and I only regret that most of them don't have the time to note it.

How awesome is my kid?

2006-09-27T08:59:00.000-07:00

So my kid and I were talking about things pertaining to his parents' separation, heartache ensuing from that, and the future. The future involving, in my mature pretending to be detached mommy speech, the parents getting together with other people. Blah blah blah. I hate this conversation. Then my son says,
"I know who you will get to be your boyfriend now"
And I say, "Who?"
He says, "Just wait and close your eyes!"
Which I do. Then he says OPEN

And he is standing there with his Batman mask on.

Now translation: he means George Clooney, whom he knows from the Batman movie.

Scars

2006-09-25T12:17:00.000-07:00

true story: a star is born of two things

her million year life the process of making more out of those things

one from the other

hydrogen to helium by way of adding or losing something

to make something

until one day it makes iron, the stable 26th element

and silly habitual romantic that she is

the star aspires to the betterment of that:

beyond stability into perfection

in attempting to make the 27th element she dies

the explosive accident of her death is the only way we get

all the other elements beyond the 26th

like carbon without which there is no life

the universe holds of 140 billion galaxies like ours in just a corner of itself

across hundreds of thousands of light years

a telescope photographs gas clouds giving life to stars to come

from the deaths of other stars now inconsequent and dull

a telephoto witness

here on earth today

it’s hard to walk without brushing up against all the jagged edges

razor thin subtle but the cuts are wet

and red

mostly I’m worried about my face

I have to have a face left to look back at in the mirror

turn my forearms upwards like a prayer without hands

the place under my eyes warms right before the tears

burning up my mask for the day

for this day people will know I have lost my face

there is a sensory muting of sorts

a general retreat of all your outer extremities

into your inner most insides

which now are crowded and mangled

and itching to throw themselves out your throat

should you speak

you are now just the size of the small hole right in between your breasts

dimming

because this is not the first time and this is not a reversible process

your best case scenario has always been scars

Hurt on Pause

2006-09-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine who is into meditation—actually a couple, have suggested to me many meditation-related remedies to my current condition. I can’t meditate. They say if I did, I would not run laps around my crazy head. I would just…listen to myself breathe and focus. But I can’t right now. Right now I just feel hurt. Like someone pressed pause during the movie of my life at a very bad time and is making me exists in this freeze frame where I just hurt. My first thought of the day is of the general “he doesn’t love me anymore he loves someone else this shit is over forever there will never be another try at this” inclination. My every thought after that, that is not occupied with work or talking to another person, is about the same. It’s hard to sleep and hard to eat. It’s very hard to not obsess and not wish I could control t hings that I clearly cannot control. Like I can’t control my wishing to control and undo and redo and erase and replay and retry and go back and fix and make it not so. And it’s hard to listen to someone else tell me how it’s all for the best and really doesn’t matter and how I am overreacting and really if I dig deep, I will find that I don’t care. I suppose in a perfect world or if I were a perfect person that would be true. It’s not true.

Girl Bias

2006-09-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

My best friend is a gay man. And I tell him all the time he has a girl bias. He thinks anything a woman does is fantastic. He loves women. If he comes to really love a friend who is a man, I think it surprises him—he finds it almost exotic. And deep down, he’d probably like them better if they were women. A woman can be a sociopathic bitch and he’ll find the part of her that’s actually a kick ass bitch, you know? He allows women to do and say things he’d never tolerate in a man. If the woman does it with style and looks fierce, then forget about it. Some famous women can do no wrong, like Janet and we all know Janet’s done Plenty. Wrong.

Or most recently, he and I are having a vicious disagreement about the merits and gifts of Fergie from the B.E.P. He’ll throw shit out like “but she used to be a meth addict” like it’s points for Fergie. I’ll say shit like “VIP Cause you know I gotta shine, I’m fergie ferg and me love you long time” back as counterpoint. That song is wack dude, and you have a girl bias.

One of his favorite movies of all time is not the movie so much as the performance of Isabelle Huppert in La Pianiste. There is a real endless depth to how much you love women when you love that. Girl bias, big time. I’m not mad at it insofar as it serves me, but I gotta call a spade a girlophile.

I tend to have a boy bias that works exactly the opposite. I even have boy envy. Thank god I had a son—now he can be my idol and I don’t have to apologize. I too sit and worship at the altar of the failed male ego, and consider every flaw to be just a crooked embellishment in a beautifully disorderly soul. Sean Penn’s wife merely hints that life with him may be terribly complicated, and I envy her. Then I worship Sean, but I also often wish I were Sean. “Wish I was born a boy” I say, as cure to all my ills. And in full on borderline retarded heterosexist mode I elaborate: I would be callous and detached, I would have a truncated emotional vocabulary, I would have no fear of running away from people and things, I would fuck up often but always think I was the bomb. I would have vices that women would swoon over and a really dope metabolism that would allow me to get a hot body from just doing push ups. I would always excell because expectations of me would be terribly low—and if I failed and bit my bottom lip like Bill Clinton does, I would be forgiven instantly. I consider all that shit to be simple, cleaner, easier, lighter on your feet. With women it’s all complicated, messy, harder and heavy on your shoulders; I wish I was born a boy, I say.

In my current state of disarray though, the womaness of me is very acute. It is part of what feels alienating and foreign, to a degree; I generally feel like less than a woman, like I don’t quite have the attributes (which probably is why I have the envy/bias, ‘cause I think I’d make a better man than the woman I make). I can’t really explain why, though I can speculate--but I have needed to hear from the women in my life and I have gone to them knowing they would know what to say and to the last one, they have come through with shining colors. About this business of him having a girlfriend, they have had this exact concoction of one part empathy, half a part sobriety, two parts witness on my behalf, and one last half part outrage. They’ve had the right looks, the right tone when they’ve left voice-mails, the right words when they’ve written e-mails. They’ve said watershed day-breaking type things without much thought, they’ve had insight and clarity and a profound understanding of who I am and what this is like for me. And my gay man best friend has had insights as well, of course, but foremost among them I would venture is that I would need to hear from my women-friends.

Oh you know, someone told me that when you’re grieving things get opened that were otherwise closed. One way to say this is that you get teary eyed and sentimental over nothing. Another way is that your standard filters that decide what you’re going to buy and what you’re going to call bullshit are down, because your whole system is down. It’s like emotional imunedeficiency and you are suddenly much more susceptible to invasions by emotions and signs you would generally be immune to. In this case, I am susceptible to regaining an almost romantic sense of my place among my women friends, irrespective of how often I see them on a daily and how complicated my relationships with them may have been. Some contaminants are good contaminants. Right now as I am hyper-aware generally, I am hyper-aware of the extensive quality and variety of great women friends that I have and that love me and that get me.

At work too I have been embraced by a community of mothers, who actually don’t all know the drama ensuing—they just know what it’s like to be a mother and to be a mother on your own. And to be a young mother. And it’s the same sort of capacity for just delivering to me what I need, without much to say about it, with a subtlety but directness of purpose that almost makes your breath stop—because there is no way that you are alone in the world if someone knows exactly what you need when you need it. The feeling of what is getting passed to me is the information and resources that they have paid a price to get—their veteran insights, the problem solving solutions they have honed. And what goes unsaid is that we know that the sole purpose of adversity has been so we’d have a way to make it easier for the next one. In this case, I’m the next one. It just connects.

One of my great girlfriends said to me yesterday, you should pay attention to how people who are not assholes treat you and how also men who are not assholes treat their women. You should observe that so you can understand that it is very real. And it’s not hard to come by and not amazing and not out of the ordinary. It is what it is, it is what considerate people who care about each other do.

Below, some excerpts of some shit that illustrates what I mean. Out of context, some of it reads as harsh but none of it was out of context. All of it gave context where there was none before.

From my friend N, a voicemail:
I know you said not to call so sorry to call. I don’t need any details I just wanted to say three things:

1. what the fuck?!
2. totally understandable reaction on your part
3. what the fuck?!
And one more thing: sometimes I like when life makes decisions “for me” cause that makes it easier.

From my friend S, via e-mail:
There is a large possibility that he will never change and never get his shit together in life which you know. That means that you would never ever be happy with him, despite how much you love each other, and your life if he were really in it full time would always be
one of emotional distress and frustration. Therefore weighing the 2 types
of emotional distress: him in your life as partner vs. him having
a new girl in his life, the second is better, as eventually, no matter how shitty it feels in the moment, you will get past it. Having him as your partner, is a situation that can never be worked out smoothly, unless he changes, which he has shown himself incapable of up till
now. Getting used to the idea that the status quo is changing is something you can work out, and getting used to shitty changes, you have proved yourself an expert in over your life.

From my friend A, live phonecall:
You don’t have to say anything; I’m not gonna grill you. I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to be in town around October 7 and will see you. And maybe you can come back with us (for the weekend). And that I love you.

From my other friend A, phonecall:
You need to make a list of all the fucked up things he did to you over the seven years. Because when it hurts and you get confused and start thinking you lost something that was good enough or someone that treated you like you deserve to be treated, you need to look at that list for perspective.

From my friend A, who is in Africa:
You have to know you got the best part of him, the part that wanted to be a better person and the part that made your son. This part of him is the bad part, that is resigned to fail himself and fail everybody else and you don’t want this part.

From my friend K, the most critical aspect was that she visited me on the night I found out, with wine and weed and slept over. She told me that she remembered the time when her relationship was horrible but the feeling, the love was so unparalleled in her life, she felt she should and would take all the blows that came with keeping that feeling, mostly because she was terrified she would never have that again if she lost it. Today she has a good relationship with the same man but she said now they both understand that he could mess up enough to make her leave and if she did, she would never fear he had been the best she could get. And she said all that very casually and very easy. And we know she didn’t come to that conclusion very easily.

And she also said something like “You can’t get depressed and start eating and getting nasty and feeling ugly. And when you’re in the gym you’re not dwelling inside your own head. It’s important that you feel hot right now” Actually, now that I think about it, that was part of ALL my girlfriends’ responses. I think I totally have a girl bias now.

It's Not In The Cards

2006-09-20T07:01:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine gave my son this little refrigerator magnet that’s a little fortune teller booth. It has a little fortune teller inside sitting with a ball. And it says “Madame Fortune” on it. When you press a button, Madame Fortune says, in a generically continental accent, one of two things:

It’s in the cards…

It’s not in the cards…

It alternates between each answer. My son has figured this out and has tons of fun asking Madame Fortune shit like:

--will I get a tattoo when I am nine years old?

--will my father buy me a kid motorcycle next summer?

--when I win the lottery, will I buy myself my own ferris wheel?

Yesterday when I was cooking dinner and he was hanging out, he asked Madame Fortune:

Will my mom and dad ever be boyfriend and girlfriend again?
Madame Fortune happened to be right on and said “It’s not in the cards.”

Although my son knew it wasn’t real, he looked very upset and as if, finally, at that moment, we were going to have to talk about it. Deep breath. Ok, here we go. I tell him, I’m very sorry about that, I know it’s sad. Or something like that. He says to me:

Yes, it is. It’s very very tough all the time.

I wasn’t really ready to hear him say it that way, to use the word “tough” and not use baby talk or say anything immature or funny around it. Just say straight out his six year old life sucks—that was not something I was prepared for. Then he asks me, looking me straight in my face:

Is it sad for you?
Yes, it is. Of course, it is very sad for me.

Why?

Well because first of all, anything that makes you sad makes me sad too. But also because I also miss when we were a family all three of us and Papa lived here.

He listens and stops and says:

And he would sleep on the couch before but he would still sleep here in the house. Well not this house but the other apartment. But not even that anymore.

Yeah, not even that anymore. But we’ll be fine and things will get better and we’ll all get used to it and be a different kind of family.

Not me. I never get used to it.

I told him---I’m not sure what I told him. In fact, in this retelling of the conversation that happened last night, I’m approximating my lines. I just know his lines because they hit so hard.

I know that there was a lot of hugging and promises to do the best that I could to make it all be less sad everyday. And apologies for it being the way that it is. And assurances that we tried very much to stay together but sometimes grown-ups just don’t come through the way the kids would want them to and that is so not fair but so much a part of life. Or something.

Later on, as if by cruel coincidence, he saw an ad about spending time with a child on TV—maybe a mentor ad? To it he said, “Not my dad. He doesn’t even spend any time with me anymore.” So more assurances that we could try and sit down with the dad and I would help him speak to him about it; we would sit together and tell the dad what my son needs—surely Papa would get better at spending time again. I would help, I would be there when they talked. The whole time I am thinking, am I asking a six year old to speak to an adult about treating him right? What am I, a fucking sociopath? Then I realize, I simply don’t know what the fuck to do.

So wow, my plate is full, right? There is whole lot of shit starring me in the face right now and I don’t have an angle on any of it. This was a failure I did not want to have to correct. This was a story I didn’t want to have be part of my son’s life. The last two years he lived with us were mostly about allowing them to stay together if I am really honest with myself. I don't regret them because they gave my son and his father a shot at something that simply would not have happened if they didn't live together. Ironic, huh? I don’t blame myself for not sustaining that any further then the two years because I know better. I know that you can’t be some kind of architect building structures around some other person to keep them from messing up—they’ll just fuck up your structure and leave when shit’s coming down on your head. The asshole isn’t even in the room to hear what it sounds like for your six year old to tell you something you helped cause is “tough” and “sad” and he “never gets used to it.”

I did realize one thing, which is that I cannot be distracted from the fact that my son is going through his father’s disappearing act too, that he is being separated from as well, and that he has no resources for coping with that at all. And that insofar as I have great friends who will come and be there for me with wine and weed and just any and every attempt at making me feel a little less bad, I have to be that great friend for my son, bringing him the childhood equivalent of weed and wine—which is play--and you know, that takes a whole lot of energy I didn’t have at all but found immediately last night. Play and cuddles and laughter and the feeling of a full life to cover up certain absences.

My job is to put something into his life each day, something very distinctly good, though not necessarily big, whether a good story time or a good joke or a good playtime, that confirms to him beyond any doubt, that he has a good life; and by consequence, confirms that he is a good person who is loved, independent of a father who disappoints him and a family that breaks up around him. Because for kids, that's what is always at stake: everything, the entirety of who they are. It’s like you look away for a second and something fucks up your own kid. It’s brutal.

Giant Ice Cream Scooper

2006-09-19T06:08:00.000-07:00

This is clearly one of those moments: like a hot coal of a day you would rather not touch. I come to write in clear desperation and thus know I would be better off not writing from the position I am in. But writing gives me something to do with the feeling. The feeling is like someone took a giant ice cream scooper and carved out my chest. Or has a giant boot sitting on to of it pushing it down.

My (now ex) sister-in-law called me to tell me that my (now ex) has “a girlfriend” he introduced her too, that already knows the family and that I am the only one who doesn’t know. She told me they met, that she my sister in law was drunk and so was rude to the girlfriend. That the girlfriend was defensive and said among other things, “well he sleeps in my house every night.” Funny how she told me a long ass story of their “altercation” (in words) on the block that had many highlights but I only remember that line. That and the fact that he calls her a cute nickname.

Why are we this way? Why do we do these things to ourselves? This is not a man for me, this is a man I asked to leave my house in November, after 7 years of trying to work shit out. This is a man I couldn’t take back given the choices he has made—or not made. None of what I just said changes or is changeable because this man has a girlfriend who sleeps with him every night and whom he calls a cute nickname. And yet, the mere writing of the words I just wrote fuck me up something crazy. Crazy. She’s probably cuter than me too… Why are we this way?

All I think about now is that my man, the person that loved me now does my things with another woman, from sleeping with her to watching tv to taking a shower. To having breakfast after partying all night. To driving around in the city. All I think about is that the things that I have missed and cried about, the looks I don’t get anymore, the hands that don’t touch me anymore, and the care in his voice I don’t hear anymore, “she” gets. Or I should say, he gives her. There is no more excitement about seeing me, no antecipation of coming home to me, no desire that belongs to me—there is no more me in his life. He walked off first from the place I’m standing at: I don’t have a boyfriend that I sleep with every night and call nicknames.

Worse yet, I can’t even get a boyfriend. I recently have been so depressed and pathetically missing him—so in denial really, about the true reality of what our relationship was, that I had resolved to not even try to date other people. I tried for a half second and it was a total mess, I am a total mess and have been. And my ex has known, because I have spoken to him about it—to make matters worse. I can’t date other people anyway, I thought. I still love him, there’s no point. I’ll just wait. For what? Oh for the feelings to subside and for me to feel like myself again and what not. Curiosity killed the cat, ok. What did waiting like a dumbass do to the cat?

There is so much wrong with the way I feel right now. I find it odd that I actually feel physical discomfort in my chest and stomach. It is very hard to stop tearing up. Very hard. It was very hard to deal with my son this morning. Morning was very hard generally. It takes superhuman effort to not think about it. I feel humiliated, but not even that much. I wish I felt a lot more humiliated and angry and scorned and what not—instead of just profoundly, endlessly, devastatingly hurt.

The thing is, that he had someone was obvious to me in the way that he changed in his dealings with me, independent of the separation. It was obvious there was a cessation of something in the way he regarded me. In my panic it just felt like "he doesn't love me anymore." That idiotic and that precise a statement was literally scrolling past my insides on a regular basis--at each interaction. How something could be obvious and then totally devastate and shock you, I don’t know. I guess in the end when you lose everything, you like to hold on to the idea that you were special and irreplaceable, right? Or something like that. Something very childish like that—or not childish, just basic. Just "deep inside".

Fundamentally, you need to have the centrality of the person in your life reciprocated by them holding you at the center of theirs. But that’s not how relationships end, they end by shifting the centers and blowing everything up. Of the two people, I just happen to be the one unsheltered when it blows up. But thankfully, somewhere under all this stupid hurt, even
I know I’m not SO special that it won’t work the same for me as it does for everyone else:

This is going to hurt like hell for a long time and then less so and one day, not at all.

I Heart Sophie Muller

2006-08-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

Sophie Muller is a genius. That was always the case but it seems another chunk of the population is realizing it. Right now, she is everywhere. The Beyonce Déjà Vu video is hers; the most sophisticated and stylized (and awesome) country music video of all time--excepting Johnny Cash’s Hurt--Like We Never Loved At All (Faith Hill) is also hers. She will soon put out Stealing Kisses (also by Faith Hill), which given the song itself, shall prove to be another genius video for her. She did the Dixie Chicks’s Not Ready To Make Nice. Beyonce’s going to work with her again, of course, in Ring The Alarm—cause Beyonce knows a good thing. Shakira’s Hips Don’t Lie is hers as well.

Remember that fantastic Maroon 5 video, for She Will Be Loved with Kelly kick ass Preston? It was hers. So was their first video, This Love. Gwen Stefani’s been onto her for a while, with Underneath It All and Luxurious and No Doubt stuff like Don’t Speak. So has Nelly Furtado. Garbage, Annie Lennox and Eurhythmics and Sade and other UK acts were onto her long ago, of course. She’s done KT Tunstall’s Black Horse video too. My secret wish is that she will do KT’s Other Side of The World video, should that be a single—which it should.

She’s got that feminine intuitive intelligence (that men can have too, it’s not biology!), that aesthetic that can actually thrive while serving the medium of the music video and not the ego of the director (ahem, Hype Williams). Each video’s its own world, own little movie, moment, and emotion: each one’s its own visual interpretation of a song. And her style, though vastly ranging and super resourceful and creative, is consistently sophisticated and personal and sharp. Very sharp.

In mass culture, both originality and distinction are very hard to pull off I think. The culture seems set up precisely so that you can be superiorly good and still be just doing variations on the themes of the moment--you could just be brilliant at reverberating a same general tone as everyone else. Everyones bitches about lack of originality but when everything is so deeply submerged into a massively distributed aesthetic, a sort of coordinated "sense" of the times, to actually do something crisp and new and brilliant is very hard. The people who can do it have something beyond just being very talented. I have a video director crush on her. She’s on my list of idols now. I wish I could Netflix all her videos and have a Sophie Muller festival.

PS: And you know what else she did? The priceless, pitch-perfect, make your day better These Words video with the little radios that dance (Natasha Bedingfield)!!!

My Tube

2006-08-04T07:02:00.000-07:00

I hate people who bad mouth television. Hating on television is analogous to collapsing into one story the highly sophisticated life of a courtesan back in the day with that of a Hunts Point-America Undercover-Bikini-wearing-in-the-snow hoe: you can say in principle a whore is a whore, but people, we can all recognize that there is a continuum of quality there. The same goes for TV. Although all over the world television if plagued by the most idiotic, base, mindless junk programming, that negative extreme of the continuum does not, in fact, define the medium. The medium itself is great.

Most of all because it is democratic. In an ideal world, the entire TV landscape would be done in the image of PBS, but that ship has sailed. Yet and still, when quality programming does go on the air, everyone with cable can get it, right? And not everyone, as we know, has to even pay for cable, because people have ways… Every time I am watching genius TV, whether it be Colbert or HBO's Real Sports, I realize this was offered to everyone, potentially. And there is a sophistication there, and there is an access to a cultural capital there, there is education there and doors are opening there. I am thinking about Sharkweek on Discovery, that I watched with my son this week, and well, that was a super fun, free of charge, no travel necessary education-camp we had in the evenings. This week we also watched Mostly Mozart on 13, because I wanted him to realize that people play that shit from memory sometimes. Same channel has allowed him to see Wynton do his jazz classes for kids—particularly the Nutcracker one. The first time he saw it he was too little; we’re going to try it again. In theory, any kid anywhere in the city, could also watch.

Obviously this is a pro-television position. It is not meant to disregard the many ills of corporate conglomerate consolidated junk media, which is, in the end, the bulk of what television is, unfortunately. That is the snow hoe TV that leads many a serious parent to forfeit television altogether for the little one. I’ve gotten criticism for not doing that: I think the criticism is classist, personally. Because maybe if I had the money, so that I could have the time, to cultivate and entertain my child with a perfect concoction of exciting outdoors and literary activities, various arts classes, a compelling array of teachers and mentors and what not, I too would forego TV. Like Madonna. But I am not Madonna. I am a single mother and if Elmo were not a puppet, I would leave Elmo something in my will, in never-ending gratitude for his profound contributions (along with the rest of the Sesame Street gang, along with the producers of Noggin’) to my child’s healthy development from ages 2 to 3 (he wasn’t allowed to watch before he was 2 because I do have common sense).

Sometimes I do wonder, because there is so much that people want to say about it, whether it is okay that my son and I watch and talk TV. We don’t do it at the detriment of books and other things, but we do it. He is a fan of Power Rangers and we often watch Power Rangers. We also do our own invented “Episodes” of Power Rangers as play, with the toys. We argue about which spin off is best, we discuss plot twists. We reminisce about particular episodes. When he is a better reader, and loves a book, we’ll have the same exact exchange about his favorite book (let’s hope it’s Harry) that we will have had for years now about TV shows and movies—is that a bad thing? It’s not. It’s good to have a sense of narrative, to watch this watered down version of social interactions between good guys and bad guys, to watch people have “dilemmas” (whether or not one can be a true leader and take on the Red Ranger suit; whether or not one should return the $100 dollar bill one found in the Recess playground), to understand the arch of a story. Even sophisticated stuff: the other day we had a discussion about the difference between gore and suspense, though not in those exact words. It was about how come he can watch very gory (I find them disgusting personally) monster movies on TV (Blade, Alien v. Predator) and love them, but any Spielberg suspense movie devastates him with fear (Jurassic, War of the Worlds, Jaws). I was able to explain the difference between what makes kids scared and how kids get scared, versus the more sophisticated idea of suspense. I probably finally got close to having him understand the actual meaning of “grown up stuff” and understand why he should stay away from it. Why, in fact, it was not a random rule to ruin his life, but truly in his best interest. All this progress, all this pedagogy and what not, came for free, by accident, while I got dinner ready and ran around and he did his thing watching TV. I like anything that can help me out and won’t cost me half my paycheck.

There is one thing about TV that I thought was without recourse, and that is reality TV. When it started I thought it was so profoundly low quality, that it would catch on, blow up and of course, die down. I watched with profound despair when instead it just became what is now a staple of TV. The shitty gift that keeps on giving: reality TV is like the furry animal that gets wet and turns into a million Gremlins. From The Real World, we went to the general paradigm of the reality show of cohabitation, now spun into a million modifications according to channel and demographic: cohabitate half naked, cohabitate to compete for money, cohabitate to win Flava Flav’s heart, and so forth. From Survivor, we went to a general paradigm of the reality show of competition. This one subdivided further when Idol hit, and we have the throwback return of the talent show, reality TV style (that means there’s audience cell phone voting, a British guy, and a pop star who is much beloved but much in need of a comeback; I must say, I take offense to the suggestion that Brandy needed to do what she is doing because she is truly dope, but it’s cool). I couldn’t begin to list all the ways reality TV is complete and utter trash: I found it particularly fucking stupid. Without any redeeming potential whatsoever. And most egregious of all, in a medium like TV that does excellent reality—as in documentary, to have reality come to mean manipulation was particularly annoying to me. Whatever happened, I thought, this “trend” and “type” of programming would never do anything but suck. And then, the smart channels decided to try it. Hence the advent of good reality TV, proof positive that TV, as a medium, is genius. Why? Because it can even elevate what is seems essentially un-elevationable. (That's not just true of TV, it's true of pop culture, I guess by default).

Behold what happens when concept channels that are very smart like Bravo and VH1 do reality. It’s brilliant. If anybody at Bravo was researching, they noticed that Food Network was a brilliant channel, “already ” doing premier reality TV in the form of the “celebrity chef” oriented cooking show. All they needed to do is conceptually elevate the concept to a Bravo-like quality (they are, after all, home of Lipton’s Actors Studio--be still my beating heart!), throw in the two basic staples of reality: cohabitation and competition. Voila Top Chef. Brilliant television. They also do a high-minded answer to Tyra’s Top Model: Project is clearly smarter, chicer, and hipper and fully aware of the fact that fashion is not about models—that is does not air on UPN is not an accident. (I’m not hating on UPN, they did Girlfriends!, and I watched UPN do its makeover and merge and change its name, and that shit was brilliant too). It’s sort of sweetly coherent for a TV watcher to be able to invent these narratives: so Bravo is the smart woman’s reality TV now, and if I had to say what it does, I would say it does lifestyle-lifecraft-oriented programming: gay makeover guys, tabloid journalists, fashion designers, chefs, and latest addition, workout gurus. Watching reality TV about people’s work and lives just has more soul, and soul is just more real than fake tans.

VH1 is a shining example of what one can accomplish when one loves and accepts one’s true self as a lifelong TVer. I say this because VH1 is truly like a person—me. And people like me. VH1 is my age and has my viewing habits and shares my frustration with music channels that do not show music and made the transition from MTV to grown up VH1 seamless and beautiful for me and my kind. And when they did reality—which they, like I, think is bullshit—they did it laughing, hence Celebreality. Because a) why would you watch other REGULAR people like yourself when you could watch train wrecks? and b) because if reality is the number two obsession that must be laughed out of the culture, celebrity is number one. The channel would be masterful with only Celebreality but when you add the I Love The... shows, Best Week Ever and now the World Series of Pop Culture, well that shit is a checkmate in mass pop culture demographic specific television programming. Even the so-called junk can be aged to higher quality, you see?

I recently thought MTV’s quality was awful—I was confused as to where the brilliance of that channel had gone, then I realized I just was older. Ha! I know it is still a shitty channel, because it could be programming better for its very young demographic anyway, and instead it programs worse (with obvious exceptions like the awards shows, Making the Video and the occasional News special). My being older though, makes my opinion irrelevant, and that too, I think is what's great and necessarily democratic about TV. Someone could say oh but it’s not kids programming for kids, it’s grown-ups programming junk for kids. It's top down. Ok, so grown-ups at MTV think that the kids are stupid, having sex, and all ADD? So do other grown-ups, like politicians. At least the people behind Pimp My Ride bring some decadent pleasure to the teen and teen masses, not mandatory academic dumbass testing, abstinence education and Ritalin… Still, I have discovered on MTV a reality show to rank high with the greats, a reality show that truly belongs on Bravo—Run’s House. Run’s House is absolute happiness. Run’s House is better than the Cosby show because it is “real.” That coming from me is very strange but having watched it, I have to stand by that. I can't say enough about Run's House. It’s a family reality show about love and laughter and how a family is filthy rich with both (and also filthy rich period, but you don’t even care, because you believe the substance of their happiness and good humor is not their money; I think to air that perspective on US televisionin 2006, on MTV no less, is Rev-olutionary).

My absolute favorite channel and the reason for most of my high opinion of TV, as displayed here, exists, is of course, HBO. (Please see side bar of this page, under Dream Job). I can quickly say that though recently it has faltered slightly (no more Carnivale? what is up with the slouch Sopranos mini-season that just ended? Rome needs some writers! too much air in Entourage!), we all would rather watch HBO fall short than watch most channels try for excellence… And yet, in the HBO-fication of its peers, we witness the rise of Showtime. No, not the gay shows—those truly are wack to me, but Weeds and Huff. I want to believe those shows were developed with HBO on the brain and HBO passed on them, because I believe that HBO’s advent made it possible for a kind of concept to be recast as television material that would otherwise not exist: material that is too good, too slow and too long for movies OR regular TV. Anyway, I heard Showtime cancelled Huff I think. If they did it’s a crime. That’s all I’ll say about it.

Although it is hard for me to not go into the real-time American Myth re-building televised theatrical brilliance that is Deadwood, I don’t think an entry about TV generally is where my love letter to HBO original programming belongs, because, let’s face, It’s not TV.

Half A Century For Tido

2006-07-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

In a faraway place today, in Cape Verde today, my dad turned 50. It is officially the first time I feel any of my parents have a bonafide grown up age that I can share with the world. My whole life my parents had the "obscenely young" thing going on. My mother's 46--I'm thirty, yes it was legal in Cape Verde at the time. Or rather, it didn't matter. Or rather, it wasn't illegal. Anyways, they got married and did the whole wedlock thing. Not that it helped any of us three to try and be a nuclear family. Growing up with them was like sharing a college dorm with your two older siblings. For the first 6 years, we were in fact, in a college dorm situation, although it was a very tiny duplex, in a college town in Belgium. Having licked my wounds in that regard, having super young parents is cool now. Fun. The space between 30 and 40 (the new 30!) and 50 (the new 40!) gets to be minimal in many ways and in a profound way, the fact that they and I can cover common ground now makes up for a lot of fucked shit in the past. People with fucked up childhoods and parents who fuck up never get over it. It's not in the plan that you would get over it--just like I guess one doesn't get over DNA. Fucked up childhoods are like emotional DNA, in a way. Inheritance. A concerted effort to re-invent the relationship with the parent once you're strong enough--enough to deal with them without further bruising yourself up against their issues (not easily done at all)--can be very rewarding. If you come to that task having had a child yourself then it's even more rewarding. On the one hand, now that you are a parent, you realize you can never forgive them for some of the shit they did, but on the other hand you realize, from the places inside your motherhood, that when we are busy passing judgment on humanity, humanity just happens. Your parents--the bastards, monsters, manipulators, cruel inflicters of hours and hours of therapy that they are--are just as human as you are. And as a parent you too become just as humanly capable of fucking up as they were. And if you sit with that, and you look them in the eye, there is a familiarity there that is central to your existence. Whenever a person can catch a glimpse of where they came from and find that thread, even through all the bullshit, then the world is good that day. So despite a HUGELY significant amount of stuff between us, today I was in a position to genuinely get excited about my dad's birthday and call him and share in that moment in his life. Having turned 30, I think I finally grew up, and today, he says, so does he. (A cool aside is that I am the spitting image of my father, in physical appearance, for better (great legs without playing the soccer he plays!) and for worse (chubby belly without drinking all the beer he does), as well as temperament: my dad likes things nice and easy and preferably, very funny. I get my charm from him. I love my father. His name is Jose Carlos Santos Monteiro, a.k.a. Tido, and he is 50 today.

Coming Unhinged

2006-07-14T10:43:00.000-07:00

My colleague Tina, who I would like to describe as a Lady Par Excellence (think of that as you will), was part of a conversation many of us were having about marriage. The others were married, I was the separated one, and we were talking about fights and conflict. And everyone was offerring anecdotes. T's anecdotes were brilliant because they were straight out of a black version of "War of the Roses" or something. Her argumentation tactics had flair, they had angles and personality. They went beyond all of our meager attempts to control our respective mates. Her shit worked--it was, well, it was hardcore. Brilliantly so. That the words were coming from an irreproachably groomed and poised woman only made the thing sweeter to hear. Here's a paraphrasing of my favorite anecdote from her.

"Like that time I took the doors off the hinges? "
Congregation responds in unison: THE TIME YOU DID WHAT?
"Yeah... Well we were arguing and it was getting all heated and you know he is all about toning it down and not liking cursing and loudness and whatever. And so you know he said he didn't want to continue the conversation. Was not going to. Was like T, you know I'm not talking anymore. So he went into the room and closed the door. On me, while I was talking. So the next day I went to the super Mr. Robinson and was like, can you please come here and take my bedroom door off the hinges and put it in the basement until I tell you bring it back? Thank you. And I did, I had the door taken out and when he got home I told him. I said, you DO NOT close the door on me when I am speaking to you."

I don't know what that's called, that quality, and I know it is often lampooned as a black woman predisposition but it's not as widespread as the stereotype suggests, nor is T the stereoptype in that sense of the angry black woman--though we joke about it a lot at work, she and I. There is though, in women like T, a real genius to behold. And like genius, it's not always on point, sometimes it's off and sometimes it's bad. But it is genius. She took the door off the hinges to inject the oft uttered phrase "dont you close that door on me!" with real weight and consequence. She exhibited a complete independence from the status quo expectations about what a woman can and cannot do--one simply does not unhinge doors, you know? But why not--if really that is what she felt was needed to do? That's liberating. In her liberation she changed the whole landscape: don't just say shit that don't mean shit. Having uttered many myself, I can tell you that nothing's more pathetic than a woman's ultimatum when it turns out to not be... an ultimatum. So to me T is some kind of superhero in many respects.

Tidbit

2006-07-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

Would it be okay if I just took a moment to say that raising a kid (especially by yourself or by yourself for the most part) is very very very very very very very very very hard work sometimes?