Last American Childhood

Big and Little

2012-01-27T12:19:00.017-05:00

When Wally’s upset in the hallway school sometimes I see a teacher gently grab him and say, "Is this a big deal or a little deal?" Dropping a raisin on the floor is a little deal. Not getting to press the button for the elevator is a little deal. Kids learn easily which things deserve tears and attention and which things you just shake off.

Sometimes I feel I'm able to employ that method. Yes you may feel upset or annoyed, but you can still quantify something as a big or little deal and act accordingly. Scowl from neighbor, exciting project that fell through, cold email from friend who is annoyed you can’t come to her dinner party—all little deals.

I’d been good for a while, keeping perspective, helped along with things like the virtual food drive my sister opted for this year for her birthday instead of gifts*, and Zen sayings that come in Yogi tea like “When eating, eat. When walking, walk” and my friend SB’s reminder about how when volunteering in Haiti you have to bring iodine so you can purify and drink the water. That should be enough right there to put every day in perspective. If you can start your day drinking a glass of water without adding iodine to it to be sure that it won’t kill you, that’s enough. You can stop right there. Whatever else happens that day, you have to keep that as an anchor. My father has been using the expression "First World Problem" whenever tempted to complain about their leaking roof and the enormous sums of money they keep pouring into it (apparently with no sign of progress).

As an aside, home renovations or repairs as a topic of discussion are off-limits.** This needs to be added somewhere to Conversation New Rules. You can--if absolutely necessary--make passing mention of the fact that you are having some work done on your house but you must end the discussion there! No details about rafters or or sawdust or taking things out of the crawl space in the attic or how inconvenient it is to have contractors around all day not be able to use the 2nd floor bathroom. And not because it falls into the First World Problems category (if I couldn't complain to friends about minor stuff, half the relationships I have would dissolve) but because it is unforgivably dull. You cannot torture people with area-lighting, vinyl flooring, or details about using tarps to cover your furniture.]

Okay, so lately I'd been good about separating big and little, and then last week the "little" started to invade in such a big way. A misunderstanding with other parents at what should have been a fun get-together for the PTA led to people leaving in tears and frustration and stirring about it all weekend and even into the week. I myself left shaken and off balance and unable to stop talking about it the rest of the day and even with friends that night at a Himalayan Art exhibit at the Rubin Museum (free every Friday 6-10!). Staring at dozens of portraits of Buddha in tranquil repose did not help; I could not stop ruminating about the upsetting events of the day.

To be fair, it wasn't merely uncomfortable like a run-in with a crazy person at Gristedes. It is about Wally's school, and the area of disagreement is still murky, and it has become kind of awkward, even for those of us --all of us I think -- doing our best to "drop it".

Still, it has preoccupied me and swallowed up good working or playing hours in a way that's out of proportion. And there's one other preoccupation that won’t compartmentalize itself, and that has to do with payment and contracts for freelance writers and editors. This year is really my first "go" at trying to maintain a freelance lifestyle without full-time care of a toddler. In 2010 I came to blows with a publisher over a contract for a book I wrote. Basically, there is a standard contract, and naturally it protects the publisher and leaves the writer vulnerable. For a fee of $1500 or so (and if you’re lucky, a tiny royalty deal, let's see if anything ever comes of it), you agree to unlimited liability for anything bad that comes out of publishing the book ever. You indemnify the publisher against, basically, everything. Even though it could be their idea (in this case it was), and a hot-button lawsuit topic (loading up a classic children's dessert with alcohol), you, the little candlelit writer, making a few thousand dollars a month if you're really on a roll, assume all responsibility for anything that might go wrong. Not the publisher with the insurance or the team of lawyers. If anyone brings a lawsuit against the publisher for any reason--even if it's a "trivial suit" that immediately gets tossed out, you are still responsible for any and all lawyer's fees that accrue because of it. And this is only the tip of the iceberg in what you agree to when signing a contract. But you are lucky to get to write the book, and you're one little person against a big, inhuman machine. (I did "win" that fight, by adding liability cap and “to the best of my knowledge” clause, with help of lawyer friend –okay I admit I am a rather well-connected candlelit writer.) But it was tough and awkward and I only won with the help of my lawyer friend because we were basically already printing at that point.

So that's one thing, and then the other is actual payment. For many jobs I will get the equivalent hourly rate of someone at a desk job making $35,000, which is somewhat fair. I am, after all, able to wear pajamas and eat cake batter for lunch without anyone making snide remarks. But then there are jobs where the pay is less than I would make as a temp receptionist for Atlantic Microwave in Bolton, Mass. Less than I did make 14 years ago when I was a temp receptionist for Atlantic Microwave in Bolton, Mass.

Still this is all okay with the understanding that you are "lucky to have work" and lucky to have a flexible schedule, etc. But it’s still bothering me. Here is this corporate publishing machine squeezing the people who write or design their books by paying them as little as the market will possibly bear. And people will work for little, because it’s relatively fun work and if you wanted to do crappy work and make money you would have gone into Finance or something. But I’m not even talking about making a lot of money. I’m talking about making as much as an entry-level editor. But the corporate machine’s end goal is always going to be the profit margin of the book, not your lifestyle, not what's fair, not what's going to even get the best quality. Just that cold, exacting column on a spreadsheet. The profit margin.

None of the editors working at the publisher is offering to take a pay cut to get a better margin. Those are separate "columns". They don't intersect. It's a machine designed to--I hate to use the word exploit--that sounds too harsh--a machine designed to take advantage of the people who are in a position to be taken advantage of, the people without leverage, without lawyers, without insurance, without authority. Yes you may do something better or more carefully, but you are competing against others who are cheaper, who will do it less carefully, who will bang it out and not worry about quality. The publisher will pay you as little as it possibly can and not a penny more. They are big and you are little.

In both cases, the fiasco with the parent group at Wally’s school and the payment negotiations with a publisher, I have felt taken aback by how little I’ve felt. In both cases, I have felt that it is just me, or me and one other parent in the former case—who is speaking out against some nameless entity, against the anonymous authority of “the way things are done”. A tiny voice questioning anonymous autocratic policies, “boilerplate” contracts and standardized fees. Whatever human being you’re actually talking to, it’s never him or her talking back. It’s the company, the organization, the group, the standard contract, the spreadsheet column, the official policy, the way we’re always done it, or “what the market will bear”.

Still, I have to grab myself, stop myself, and say, “Big deal or little deal?” I am not Erin Brockovich. I’m not even talking about taking on Wall Street here. The answer, I know, in both these cases, is little deal. Which is why I'm so annoyed at the air traffic they're generating in my head.

Yesterday on the way to pick up Wally I read pieces of May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude. I've referenced it before. It is a constant source of guidance for me. In one section - February - she talks about "a day of frustrations and irritating demands". She tries to return to work but "…by then the thread of the morning's work was broken and I never got back to my center." Later, in April, "Just a bit too much of life pouring in lately, so I feel agitated and up in the air." She talks about the difficulty of creating (she was primarily a poet) when there are pulls from other people. "I find that when I have any appointment, even an afternoon one, it changes the whole quality of time. I feel overcharged."

Partly I know that's all that is going on. In addition to these areas of conflict, I have seen lots of people lately, had many (not boring!) conversations, been taken out to drinks by various clients and publishers, met with neighbors, spent more time out in the world because of this ridiculously warm weather. So partly it is just the fact of not being centered enough, focused enough. And then, naturally, because of that, feeling scattered.

I know that these issues - the PTA, and the freelance negotiations, aren't personal. You can volunteer or not, accept a given job, or not. That's the whole point - they're not personal. You're a person, but what you're dealing with, up against, it's not. It's a system. And those are de facto impersonal and unfeeling. So you can't let feelings dominate in areas where you've been warned at the start they're not relevant, they don't matter. Feeling awkward at a PTA meeting, feeling taken advantage of by a publisher - those are just your feelings; they're inconsequential. They're not relevant to a machine that never feels awkward, a machine that always has the advantage.

But, where May Sarton illuminates here, is admitting that she is not "above it all". Where she admits she may have disappointed someone by being "a far more vulnerable, involved, and unfinished person than she had imagined". That's how I feel this week. Vulnerable, involved and unfinished. May disagrees with a friend who implies that "not to have given up personal life was regression". Talking about a poet she says, "It is his business to write poetry, and to do that he must remain open and vulnerable."

So there you have it. Tranquility comes at a price. It may mean giving up the extreme reactions that lead to headaches, pounding hearts, unsettling days over really pretty minor stuff. But that may also mean giving up the feelings that, when channeled in productive ways, allow you to create. Creation, too, comes at a price. The work for which I sign ludicrous contracts or accept ludicrous pay is not my real work. It is stuff I pummel through to get the chance to do my real work. The PTA is not related to the quality of Wally’s education, no matter how much it can feel that way. I can't let the feelings of frustration that arise out of conflicts in those areas derail me from what's important. Nor can I shut them down completely. They are little, but they are the natural consequence, an inevitable one, of being open and vulnerable.

*Actually I have to credit my mom for launching this trend. She's been requesting oxfamunwrapped for a while now, where you buy things for people who actually need things.

**That transition may have been misleading. Thankfully my parents don't talk home repair. It's just the general anxiety that seeps into their voices because of the leak on the roof and the ice dams. (I have no idea what ice dams are. They sound rugged and Scandinavian.)

Let it rise

2012-01-21T18:55:00.006-05:00

Where do you find yeast in the supermarket? The active kind. Funny how they refer to it that way. "Active yeast". Isn't that the whole point of the thing? If we were okay with passive yeast we'd have settled for matzoh. Anyway, where is it? I've looked in three supermarkets now, mostly in the flour aisle, to no avail. At Whole Foods, Wally said, "We should ask someone" but I was stubborn, like men are with directions, and preferred to go blustering about, getting increasingly irritated, stripping off my hat, then scarf, then jacket pushing and squatting and craning my head through the aisles dragging Wally behind me.

I can't remember the last time someone at a grocery store knew where something was. It's true I sometimes I ask for something fairly remote (vegetarian Worcestershire sauce, although it's likely to be stocked somewhere near the standard anchovy kind), but usually it's something someone with even a barebones grasp of the store's overall layout should be able to locate. But usually you just end up following the person who works there around, wondering whether it's rude after a minute or so to say, "Nevermind, it's really not that important". Like are you locked in, now, because you were the one who initiated the search, or is there a statue of limitations on your role in it? Are you allowed to call it off, or at the very least, withdraw?

“That’s okay, thanks for looking though.”

“No we have it, we have it.”

“Really that’s okay. I have to--”

“Gimme a second.”

I have still never figured out whether the store across the street from us has tofu but no one knows where, or if they just don't carry it. "I don't think we carry that." You're making it sound like more work than it is. One assumes you carry it when stocking the shelves, but after that, you let go.

So I haven't asked anyone yet where I might find the active yeast, and I haven't found it. But it's less aggravating to seek and not find than to seek and ask and still not find.

What prompted the search was that I started to notice something a bit more obvious than mold on a petri dish killing a strain of bacteria, which was that the more expensive, fresh and tasty/healthy a bread was, the faster it got stale. Or I guess I should say, I became more aware of that phenomenon. Maybe everyone but me was already aware of that, just like everyone but me by the age of 20 knew how to make pasta without measuring out the number of cups of water or setting a timer for how long to cook it. And yes - if you asked me, I would have known that fresher bread gets stale faster, but it's never really affected me before. But lately it started irking me that you buy this nice bread and within 2 days if you don't put it in the fridge (which kinda defeats the purpose) it starts to go bad. The cheap, soft package of sliced whole wheat, air and calcium propionate that passes for bread in the supermarket--the kind we usually buy--lasts forever!! Isn't that great? With all the sandwiches I've been packing off for lunches lately, I just started thinking about how gross it is that that kind of bread lasts so long.

Hence my determination to make my own bread even if it may be, as my brother-in-law put it, one of those things that ends up costing more than the store-bought kind and not being worth it. But I can't find yeast, active or even lethargic. So today after playing outside in the snow with neighbors for Squirrel Appreciation Day (yes it really is a day, and it's today - so start appreciating them!) Wally fell asleep on the couch while Alex worked on recording a band in the back room and I scurried around looking for a recipe for bread that would rise by itself. I found one. It is the most amazing thing.

And it's just flour mixed, oats, the tiniest bit of butter, two teaspoons of sugar, baking soda not to be confused with baking powder (both are used) and yogurt. That's it. Is whatever that active ingredient -- live culture?--that's in yogurt responsible for the rising? I don't know. But you only have to knead the thing fives times and there's no covering a bowl with a towel, waiting 5 hours, then punching it down or any of that high-maintenance stuff you have to do when yeast is involved. I've been having so much fun making stuff lately, inspired by my friend's sister's food blog 5 second rule and the new book she has coming out from Running Press called Ripe: A Fresh, Colorful Approach to Fruits and Vegetables. She's a great writer, one of those where, even if you're like me you just recently learned how to make instant rice, you still enjoy reading her posts about making stuff you'll probably never make.

Though I will keep making this homemade Irish bread! Here's the recipe I used. I didn't end up using any milk in mine and I only baked it for 31 minutes.

So you can keep your Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Calcium Dioxide and Calcium Sulfate (until sometime next week when I am schvitzing and cursing in the most crowded and poorly designed ever Whole Foods, and end up resorting to Arnold or Matthew or Pepperidge Farm. When it's possible, though, when we have time, let's trade in convenience for health, happiness and good taste.

In the Old Testament, Chapter 6 of The Book of Ezra describes the feast of unleavened bread. The Israelites had a pretty convincing argument for not being willing to slow down long enough to let their bread rise (Pharaoh, escape from slavery, etc.) Our reasons are maybe a little less compelling. So let’s take a hint from a verse that appears later in the same book.

“Rise up; this matter is in your hands. We will support you, so take courage and do it," (Ezra 10:4). 

Good advice for almost any goal.

Letters I did send

2012-01-07T16:48:00.006-05:00

Sit down. Write. Stop your haphazard folding of clothes, clanging down the elevator with pinot noir bottles for recycling, picking play-doh pieces off the rug.

Stop! Reading – email, the newspaper, Rolling Stone, New Yorker articles, Geoff Dyer essays you got for the holidays, Dartmouth magazine full of profiles of people who just graduated and have already accomplished oh-so-much-more than you. Yes you need to read—lots (see Watcher of the Skies), but you can’t just soak up what others have to say, you have to say something too. You can’t just process what other people are thinking, feeling, observing, tying together—you have to process your own observations, too.

I have not kept to writing here every day. In fact, I have not posted in this new year, at all. Even in the short term, following through on such a mandate came to seem perfunctory. Writing every day is a habit, and you have to do it, and it keeps you in better shape for the writing you have to do and want to do, but people don’t need to listen to you practicing scales. So I wrote, drafts, and left them there that way, did not press send. They’re still there; letters I never sent.

Instead I had an idea—wait ! Even as I went to write this vert sentence, I started to write: “I had planned…”. See, already it was not only past, but past perfect. Past apologetic. A non-contiuous verb about past (in)action. “I had planned”, dot dot dot…

What invariably follows such a passive, roundabout, anxious backward glance? “But”…that toxic word looms—something changed, something unexpected happened, I shoulda, coulda, woulda, wanted to, tried to, was going to, had in mind to, had planned to….BUT! Cue the handwringing, unnecessary, meandering explanations, the mea culpas, the plea bargains, the neuroses and multitude of excuses, the tumbling, myriad reasons for why not which are practically my ancestral liturgy. My parents are always beginning a story about something they did do with a lengthy list offering an explanation about why they did not do something else. Sometimes they show mercy on the listener and, realizing at the start of a thinly tied web of cause and effect they are losing their audience, they cut to the chase. Even for them, the sinuous causal connections-- because of having to feed the neighbor’s cat, they weren’t able to get the boxes out of the Gibs’ garage before the Gibs left for vacation, (the Gibs left a day early because of the snow), that meant they weren’t able to send the clock to Aunt Helen in time for her birthday, so they had to call her to explain, and so on—become nearly intolerable to recite. More and more they wave away all the reasons why with a word about the long story it would naturally be, and state what they did do, with the understanding they had set out to do it differently (even if it’s just when they called you back, with only an hour differential between, in their exacting minds, perfect timing and disaster).

Setting out to do it differently is how many of us begin the New Year.

Maybe going through the litany of why you didn’t do something is a way to ensure you follow a straighter path next time. But I think it has a habit of reinforcing a sense of helplessness. I wasn’t able to get you that draft back in time because of x, y and z—all variables largely out of my control. These days I prefer, “I didn’t do it.” And if a sorry is appropriate, that can get tacked on too, mumbled, under your breath. (BTW, my parents, especially my mom, are great at offering apologies, sincere and even eloquent ones, not mumbled under the breath. The barely-audible-as-you-leave-the-room variety is the kind I’ve mastered since childhood. I actually think my parents are too good at —too quick and too good at feeling that they’re in the wrong, hence the need for the elaborate, spiderweb of reasons as to why, if you think about it, what they did (take too long to call back) wasn’t all THAT terrible in the grand scheme of things when really no one thought it was even remotely terrible in the microscopic scheme.) Direct statements, ones that describe rather than apologize, can be empowering. When I began to say, “I had planned…”I was launching into a backstory passage that would be, essentially, seeking permission for not having yet done what I had planned to do. I don’t think I can make it …is that okay? It doesn’t matter if it’s okay with the other person. Get rid of ellipses. Get rid of past perfect when the present will do. Our grammar circumscribes us. Move forward. Start now.

I plan to put pieces of my Young Adult novel The Last Days of Pluto online—in serial form—hopefully 1 section a day until a deadline of the end of January for an “emerging writers” novel contest. It’s an experiment. If I’m going to crash and burn trying to send something out daily, it may as well be for something even slightly goal-driven and worthwhile. I wrote a draft of the novel in 30 days in November of 2009 for something called Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month). So naturally, it’s crap. It’s just stream-of-consciousness stuff and to say it’s all over the place would be a wildly flattering exaggeration. So the trick is how well and how quickly I can revise it into something even resembling a story. I will post the link here, soon. I will.

(Today, January 7, 2012, the light doesn’t match the temperature. It’s that strong winter light—sun low on the horizon—but the air feels like late March or April. I can even smell it on my skin; the beginning of spring. It should feel disturbing, but it's not. It feels generative, hopeful.)

Update*** Monday, January 9 - I've been advised not to post my novel piece by piece. Maybe just the first chapter. The emphatic "I will" had been so full of good intentions.

While you have the light

2011-12-31T23:11:00.010-05:00

Snowblind travelers, on this tropical New Year's Eve, I hope you feel inspired. I hope you remember the wishes and dreams that in childhood you jotted down on scraps of paper next to your bed. Listen to lots of Bon Iver, Sigur Ros and Iron & Wine. Revisit the landscape of your youth--if only in a deep and dreamless sleep. I hope you have found--or will soon find--the worthy goal that will give your life meaning. I hope that young or old, alone or surrounded, always right about to leave or always just arriving, you greet this next year prepared to grow. Whatever advice I give you, is just advice to myself. Remember May Sarton's words: "Growth is demanding and may seem dangerous, for there is loss as well as gain in growth. But why go on living if one has ceased to grow? And what more demanding atmosphere for growth than love in any form?” I hope that whether you believe in God or the universe or fate or nothing at all you can employ your own version of the Jewish prayer called the Shehecheyanu and thank someone or something for bringing you to this moment.

To become a better runner, run. To become a better writer, write. To become a better friend, be a better friend. To become more connected, connect more. Children seem more alive, but that does not have to be the case. To be more alive, live more. People cling to problems, they seek chaos, they will always find things to worry and be upset about, they have incredible aim for the bullseye of pain. This is distraction. People don’t have to like you. They don’t have to think you like them. There are bigger goals in the universe.

During the past week I've gone back over tons of old writing -- drafts and notes, lists, journal entries, essays, stories I began, letters -- and I don't need them anymore. I can just get rid of them. I am clearing them out. I don't need to save them for some future rewrite or for posterity or for whatever it was -- I've moved beyond them, internalized the thoughts that had any relevance, and gotten past the hangups and gotten past the need to prove things to myself. (Listen to "Yes My Heart", Benjamin Oak Goodman ---right now. Google it, just get the video on youtube -- listen to this song right now.) Creation, not possession -- I will find the quote -- I don't have it at hand tonight. And I have to keep going. Work while I have the light.

Somehow--despite all the failed dreams, the lapsed-New Year's resolutions, the times we said--this is it, this time is different, this time I will change -- and then did not, we still keep making new resolutions, keep jotting down notes next to the bed, keep dreaming. And how could we not? The universe was not made for us, but we are made of stars.

On Christmas Eve, those sugar-plum dreams are full of hope for finding the thing you've wanted so badly all year under the tree in the morning. If only I could only have that toy train I saw in the window of Mr. Hayes shop on Main street. I hope I hope I hope I get that one yellow-haired dollie in the rocking chair. The coin collector set, the spy kit, the shiny turquoise dress that will twirl out when you spin. Kids, you’re supposed to want, to dream, to hope. It’s just too bad that what you’re taught to dream and hope for is so unimportant, so guaranteed to not fulfill you but to lead you to other things you want. We owe you a collective, massive apology. Not just for the Santa Claus lie, which is really the least of it. But for teaching you to want things. And for telling you that if you’re good, you’ll get them. On that magical night, that means so much, that shines like Sirius, we have it all wrong.

And yet wanting--something much bigger, elusive, impossible, like stars we still see in the sky that burned out ages ago (part of us now? Are we seeing ourselves out there, literally? ), wanting is the beginning of every story. I wanted something badly enough that finally I had no choice but to do something about it. It's the beginning of this one, too.

*A Child's Christmas in Wales "Now we were snow-blind travelers, lost on north hills"

**Henri Frederic Amiel, "Work while you have the light." (Also in John 12:35, Jesus says "Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness overtake you.")

Staring at Emily

2011-12-29T23:07:00.007-05:00

I am beginning this already with the thought -- this won't be a "real" entry. I will write -- I will try not to make it perfunctory, to give you more than simply the run-down on Wally's haircut today and the idea my mom had for pouring Crème de menthe over vanilla ice cream. She had mentioned that idea for dessert the first night we arrived, and we kept forgetting every night because we've all been working in the evenings for the most part, not hanging out drinking wine and eating m n' ms the way we usually do. But right before I go to bed each night I've gone down for a glass of water or something in the kitchen and I've been smacked in the face with the overwhelming smell of mint. I was like, wow, she's really going buck wild with the stuff--what is she doing shots and spilling it all over the place, or what? Turns out I was smelling the peppermint she sprinkles around to keep mice at bay. As of tonight, the bottle of Crème de menthe was still unopened.

On the way out to the grocery store today in the late afternoon, we stopped to get the mail. One card was a picture and beautiful letter from a girl named Caitlin. When my sister and I were little, after we moved from Virginia but before we moved to Acton, Massachusetts, we lived for a year on the Connecticut coast, down the street from my grandparents' cottage by the beach. I don't remember much, if anything, from that year (I was Wally's age now when we moved further north), but I grew up staying friends with the four other kids in what was that day's version of a "playgroup".

My mom befriended two nearby young moms, Angela and Barbara, and the three hung out together with their kids, trading kid-watching duties and getting together all 10 of us, too. Angela's family stayed close by for a while, and we stayed friends with her kids. We mostly lost touch with Barbara's, saw them only every now and again. My mom would still see Barbara; she came to my sister's wedding in 2000. But they faded. Those old, original friendships, those morning playgroups with muffins and oj, those family walks by the beach, those holiday reunions, the yearly surprise at how much everyone had grown, the sense of tracing over some authentic, familial pattern each time we hung out even if we didn't know each other all that well, the way old neighbors do, people whose parents go to the same church as your grandparents, know the same pizza place, remember things you used to do as a toddler--those friendships remained somewhere in the sepia-toned distance. It's been years now since I've seen any of them.

Caitlin's mom Barbara died 8 years ago. After we read Caitlin's recent letter, my mom unearthed a collection of newsletters Barbara used to send, the precursor to blogs, those once-a-year updates, not every night, more real, but not real-time. Here, at the start of one, she quotes Theodor Roethke in a Christmas poem. "There is a hush, a Holy Pause." I am reading the letters now, looking back through pictures, feeling that hush.

Throughout there are vivid scenes that catch you not necessarily for what they mean, but just for what they are. "The girls sat relatively demurely at a candlelit table nibbling on pizza til Aron strolled in wearing his Halloween gorilla mask." There are black and white photographs photocopied into the letter. I suppose people could be of two minds when it comes to a newsletter (or blog) update --maybe thinking, Why do I care? And for some reason, caring. What is their daily life like? Like Hemingway wrote about the "greatest difficulty" he found in writing--"to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things were which produced the emotion that you experienced." That is what blogs and newsletters are full of--or at least aim to be. What really happened in action. What the actual things were. We care not just because we care about the people --but presumably we do -- but because a picture of someone's daily life is revealing, it lets us in on a little hint -- a two-inch picture frame -- of what it's like to be alive.

In Our Town, after her death, the main character Emily goes back to her daily life, and she is so heart-broken by how everyone's too busy to look at her. Her mom's making a birthday cake I think, her dad's working like crazy. She implores them to stop but they can't. “Please anybody," she says, "just look at me. I don’t need the cake or the money. Please look at me.”

***

One year Barbara sent a postcard with the apology, "The economy makes our message briefer, but know you are always in our heart, on our lips, in our thoughts." She wrote my mom after my grandfather died, she continued to send pictures and updates about her children--one a teacher, one in the Peace Corps. And then a few years later, she died. Now Caitlin, her daughter, seems to be carrying on her mom's tradition of at least yearly updates. In one--though this, I see is from long ago, 2003, she writes, "I am my mother's daughter and so it seems, fun is always near at hand. There is so much to do, see, read-experience. I am happy." That must have been just a year or so after her mom died. At her brother's wedding that year, the "pinnacle of her year", she felt that her mom "was in her way, there."

I see from the address on the card my mom received today, that Caitlin lives in Brooklyn with her baby girl. Funny, she's just between my sister and I, and has been in New York for quite some time--a decade?--yet we haven't run into her. My first instinct lately is not to keep reaching out to people, past and future, to resist my impulse to connect--to say, the problem is that you are already so scattered, already so disconnected, don't fall into the paradoxical trap of seeking more connection only to undermine the ones you already have. And yet I think it is just my nature. I am always searching for that sense of shared history, of memories from childhood that resonate at the same frequency as one's own, I am always picking up the paper cup, listening, as Morning wrote today, for that jumbled message back.

I may or may not send a letter to the actual Caitlin, to the actual Brooklyn street so close to my own. Maybe I'll be content to read through her and her mother's letters, to think about the group of friends my mom had when I was little, and the ones -- moms and otherwise -- I have now. Content to stop making the birthday cake or worrying about money. Content to stare Emily right in the face.

Two paper cups and a string

2011-12-28T00:16:00.011-05:00

I am dragging myself to the computer tonight like a 9th-grader with a paper to write. Due tomorrow. It’s 10:36 PM and I haven’t started. Only it’s not a paper and I don't have to write it. It’s just sending a few notes out to the ether, picking up one end of a telephone made with paper cups and string. Listening to Arcade Fire and digging a tunnel, from my window to yours.

"But I don't know what to say." That's the lazy, discouraged part of myself talking to the part that felt determined to start posting every day. What was the point of that again? I'd rather watch Jon Stewart or listen to A Child's Christmas in Wales read by Dylan himself (not Bob!). There's nothing pressing that I write about right now.

I have noticed that May Sarton in her journals, Natalie Goldberg, Julia Cameron—they always start with a basic description of what they’re doing or where they are. Like Annie Dillard, they begin with the details. The flowers on the desk. The afternoon light. Like Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird, they start with something small enough to fit in a square-inch picture frame. Even John Greenleaf Whittier in his Snowbound Winter Idyll begins with the cheerless sun that brief December day.

Let go of your telescope. Forget your old journals. Put down the worn paperback book called Existentialism as Philosophy you found on your father's shelf. From the inscription it looks like an ex- girlfriend gave it to him in 1964. (I wonder where that ex-girlfriend is now, if she still believes she’s free at the exact moment when she’s not, or if now she thinks it’s the other way around.) Start with where you are, in this moment.

I am at my parents' house in Massachusetts with Wally. It's quiet. Wally's asleep in the next room. I can hear the rain outside and every now and then a giant gust of wind. Either that or parts of the roof sliding off (there was a contractor out there all day fixing something having to do with ice damns.) After dinner, Wally and I took a walk in the rain. Most all the Christmas lights were still out. We walked along for a bit with a flashlight and Wally asked where Uncle Billy's house was. (That's where we spent Christmas day.)

"Uncle Billy doesn't live in this neighborhood."

Wally stopped walking and looked at me. "He's so far away."

We continued on a little further across the bridge. "I miss him so much," Wally said. I have to remember to tell Uncle Billy. Later over by the mailboxes we found a package of grapefruits for my parents. Alex is in New York. Tonight's the last night of Hanukah.

All day on and off I worked on the last section of my gross-o-pedia book for young adults. While Wally played in the library and then home with Mimi, I was digging myself into piles of slime, blood, bile, pus, gore, guts, all kinds of horrible history, food that would make you want to throw up, disgusting customs, icky insects, bizarre rotten discoveries.

In between that I’ve been coaching my dad with this great short story he wrote a few years back. He has his patients and is running around getting wires at the hardware store, but in between that he works on his story and he works quickly. I give him tips and pointers, point out places that need to be changed. Take a graph from the end and make it the opening. You can’t suddenly jump into the other guy’s head only at the end. He takes suggestions well.

“You need a turning point here; why did she change her mind?”

“She just realized it wasn’t working.”

“No, but there’s got to be some reason. There’s got to be some impetus. What changed?”

"It just fizzled out," he answers. Silence. "No good?"

I shake my head. He runs up to his computer and shoots off a new draft.

***

Why is silence often more helpful than an actual answer? Because it reflects back the question, forces reflection? Why is it so effective for therapists, to not answer, to let you keep digging that tunnel, or to let you choose to go another way when you don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Why is silence so infuriating, but so powerful, too, forcing you to clarify your thinking. There is this amazing quote about knowing things in emptiness and silence. In Zen Mind, Beginner Mind Shunryu Suzuki writes "If your mind is clear, true knowledge is already yours. When you listen to the teaching with a pure, clear mind, you can accept it as if you were hearing something, which you already knew. This is called emptiness, or omnipotent self, or knowing everything."

All this is related to intuition, creativity, myths, dream interpretation, and the collective unconscious. Lots of things I want to read about, think about and write about. I do, it turns out, have a lot I wanted to say, I just needed to begin. Engaging patients in free-associative thought was how Freud attempted to get at the inception of their disorders. I often feel that, in free-writing, I'm better able to track my compulsions and instabilities. By listening to myself. As Harold Bloom writes in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, it is through monologues that Shakespeare’s characters grow and change. By talking out loud. They have to literally hear themselves think.

So it is with writing. I think of my advice to my dad about the character who changes in his story. Why did she change; what happened?

I do have a lot more to say. For now I'm just picking up that paper cup, attached to a string. Wondering if anyone's at the other end. Either way, I'm here.

2011-12-26T22:35:00.007-05:00

I'll be back again someday. (Tomorrow)

“I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty, aside from knowing what you really felt, rather than what you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel, was to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things were which produced the emotion that you experienced.” (Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon)

A deep and dreamless sleep

2011-12-24T23:17:00.003-05:00

I forgot the rum-spiked egg nog tonight and the peppermint ice cream.

The champagne was a bust. It turned out not to be champagne. It was a sweet, sparkly after-dinner wine. Not a hit. Alex's Christmas pies were though, as was his mom's Christmas pave, which should never be compared to tiramisu, a rather non-event dessert, beccause it's so much better. Dara identified the central problem with tiramisu: tons of sweet stuff, none of them chocolate.

It's quiet now. Christmakah Eve is almost over. I read "The Night Before Christmas" to Wally for the first time tonight. My sister has it memorized by I always start to drift off around Mama in her kerchief. It's really a mouthful, dry leaves flying around before the hurricane, mounting to the sky. Wally wondered why the daddy is wearing dress pajamas. "Daddy's don't wear dress pajamas". Not anymore. A few astute readers drew attention to the whimsy of fashion on the post about Wally's adventures in lace, pointing out that emperors of the past and Scotsmen of today pranced or prance about in outfits far more flamboyant than Wally's purple ruffled skirt.

When I think about it, Jesus is never pictured in pants. Then again he wasn't blue eyed and blond-haired either, so perhaps his fabled garb should not be accepted as sancrosanct.

I was thinking about wandering after yesterday's post. Who wandered around in the desert? Jesus? The Israelites? ("Everybody in the Bible", Alex is saying, "It's all desert.") Mary and Joseph weren't wandering; they came to Bethlehem on purpose, to register for the census (Thanks Jeannine). Then of course there was no room at the inn (the only one in town, apparently), so they became drifters, squatting in the local stable. It turned out to be a rather cozy place to occupy.

The Shepherds in the nearby fields were alarmed by the angel of the Lord who came bearing news. The angel told them not to be afraid. A babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger, would be their Savior. Then the multitudes were praising God, and hoping for peace for humanity.

In the song, "A little town in Bethlehem" why is it a dreamless sleep? In "A Night Before Christmas" dreams of sugar-plums fill their heads. If you can channel dreams into reality, imagination into history, fancy into wish-fulfillment, maybe the dreams find a different place to occupy. My favorite part in Clement Clarke Moore's poem is about settling down for a long winter's nap. Of course that's when the clatter arises; the dream of a long winter's nap fading to stardust.

No matter how old I get--no matter how hard it is to believe things I wish I could, on Christmas Eve, something endures. "The hopes and fears of all the year are met in thee tonight." It doesn't matter what we believe, with a story so embedded in our culture, fabric, way of acting, way of being, our hopes and fears will naturally converge upon it. Upon both what it is, and how we imagine it to be. On earth peace, and good will to men. Christmas still feels like it's about that heart-bursting-out-of-your-chest sense of hope. I can't think of something I'd hope for more.

A long history of wandering

2011-12-23T23:32:00.082-05:00

Outside of my bizarre stint with a group of local Born-Agains in high school led by people who should maybe not have been born the first time*, I have never had a religious tradition. I’m half Jewish and half Catholic. I'm told you can’t be half of either one. You’re either Catholic or you’re not. Also, I'm Jewish on the wrong side (father). So that leaves me both and neither. On ethnic pie charts in high school still I insisted on those halves. I could technically have put 1/4 Russian, 1/4 Polish for the Jewish side, but my relatives felt no affinity for those countries, as clearly those countries felt no affinity for them.

By the way, did you catch the Empire State building tonight? I stared out the window drinking a Jubilation Ale our neighbor had left for us. It was blue & white, red & green all at the same time! Hallelujah Melech Ha-Olam!

Agreeing to join Acton's local Born-Again chapter was probably the clearest manifestation of my inability to say no to people growing up. I had a good friend who would repeatedly ask me to join her at Monday Night Live meetings. She wore me down week after week. I caved finally and agreed to go. Saying yes was easier than thinking of yet another excuse.

Then it turned out one of the leaders, TT, lived down the street from me. Once we discovered we were neighbors there was absolutely no way out of the meetings--TT could drive me to them. TT also used to ask me to invite my friends to McDonald's after school and she'd read tracts to them. That's what they called them -- these little illustrated booklets with a clear triangle: You--->Jesus--->God. You were down on earth. God was up in Heaven. Jesus was floating somewhere in between. You couldn't get to God except through Jesus. That was the only way. My friend M. is still mad at me for those French fries sessions where she got bullied into not going to hell.

Tracts -- yes, I'm googling them now. You can get 100 in full-color for just $6 with flat-rate shipping. Hurry! You can also go on Access-Jesus.com. "No one else can save you. Trust Jesus today!" Emergency prayers. Step-by-step illustrations to disprove evolution. Time is of the essence people. And this isn't that far off. Three of today's Republican candidates for PRESIDENT do not believe in evolution. On climate change the scorecard is even more alarming. I think Jon Huntsman is the only candidate who agrees with 97% of the world's leading scientists about global warming. People should be taboo-d off the stage at the debates, you know beeped when they say something blatantly untrue. Is this Galileo's trial again? What on the it's-not-f*cking-flat-you-as-hole earth is going on?

** (deep breath)

My parents once came across my secret stash of tracts in my bureau drawer. They had bookshelves full of Elie Weisel, Darwin, Bertrand Russell, and Sartre. My mom, with a degree in library science steeped in a humanist tradition, told horror stories about the nuns that taught her growing up. For fun my dad poured over papers on existential psychotherapy. Neither one willingly brought me to a service of any kind that wasn't a wedding or a funeral. At the Christ-o-Rama Festival we stumbled across in Canada once Dara and I had to peel them off the floor because they found the pile of crutches people didn't need anymore hysterical. But here it was, plain as day, a teenage daughter with a secret drawer stashed full of tracts. Where had they gone wrong?

Yet, even if I just joined so I could avoid the anxiety of saying no, wouldn't a get-out-of-jail-free-card would appeal to anyone? Flipping through channels the other day I heard a daytime talk-show preacher telling people they didn't have to worry about their sins, they just had to turn and face God. God doesn't care about your sins. He just wants you to accept Him.

That's just weird. Why don't sins matter? Yeah, you shouldn't beat yourself up every mistake, and you have to forgive yourself, and it's great to show mercy to yourself and others, but you should try to live according with your values. You can't just be that classroom menace who has perfected the art of the apology and can get away with anything.

It always pisses me off how the Born Again world has such disdain for the "good works" central to Judaism. They say "good works" with this snarling kind of dismissiveness --" doing good doesn't matter, it's what you say you believe, that's the ticket. Words, not actions. WHAT? I really can't see a convincing argument for the life-raft - hey - I was a complete d*ck my entire life, but I believe in You now, it's all good--Beam me up!--
theory. My dad doesn't agree (though he can't point to anything that suggests otherwise) but I think tThe Jewish faith to me is super-vague on the afterlife stuff, if there's a promise there, it's iffy. The emphasis is on how you live your life, here. The practice of Tzedakah (giving 10% of your income to charity) is fundamental. The word Tzedakah itself translates to justice.

Yet my father reminds me that the Catholic church--leader of the crusades, protector of child-abusers, champion of anti-semitism, and long-time denier of the earth's roundness and of the fact that it circles the sun--has an extensive and powerful history of social justice as well. And on that Jesus site I just looked at, there was a scary warning. Catholics need to be missionized to as well. They're not safe because they're putting too much faith in actions; they're distracted, they're missing the free pass.

**(another deep breath)

In the entrance to St. Michael's church where as I mentioned last night I've been stopping by, there's a picture framed with part of a speech by the late Bishop Frank Weston called "Our Present Duty" . The passage goes like this:

“Now go out into the highways and hedges where not even the Bishops will try to hinder you. Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet.”

These messages--from priests, ministers and Rabbis, and more directly, from The Bible, are very clear on giving to the poor. From Exodus: "Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien."

From Deuteronomy: "He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing."

"Do not take advantage of a hired man who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother Israelite or an alien living in one of your towns."

From Proverbs: "If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered."

From Matthew "Jesus answered, If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.'"

From John "If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth."

There are literally hundreds more like this, in both the old and new testaments.

So even if you hate the occupy movement, and for some reason you just cannot support Obamacare because you don't think people with cancer deserve health care (come on, there's just no profit margin in chemotherapy), if you're a member of the Christian or Jewish faith, you don't need to be confused about the question of giving to others. And if you say, okay, I'll do it, I want to do it, but let me decide where I want to give, not the government -- that doesn't hold water either, not the kind that turns to wine and not the good-old fluoridated stuff that comes out of the tap (and is cleaner and better-regulated than the bottled stuff, too). Because if the government has to make major cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, more people will go into poverty. It's just a fact, and it doesn't matter if the Koch brothers give another million bucks to The Natural History Museum. In a single month, they'd owe more than that in the taxes they don't pay.

And what's weird is that despite all this, and how much I love reading Zen and Tao and Buddhist teachings, I'm still drawn to the Catholic church, perhaps because of the beauty and the solitude, hard to refute that, if you can block out the fact of so much money being taken from the poor and hoarded in the richest city in the world. But there's something else, too. Something spiritual that calls to me, and I can't even begin to explain what it is. Okay maybe I can begin. I have tonight. The occupy movement, ironically or not (don't forget Dorothy Day), led me back there. You can't believe in Jesus--believe in even the idea of who h/He was--and not be affected by the call to join a revolution against the status quo. He is the ultimate rebel.

I have a long history of wandering. I've been wandering into the church, lately, feeling some greater purpose call me. Many accuse the occupiers of not having a point. Of wandering. Wandering Jews -- you just need one word or the other, not both. They're practically synonyms. (If you get kicked out of every place you ever go, save Hollywood and Florida, you don't have much of a choice.) But anyway, wandering suits me these days.

*Stole that from my dad in comment about George W.

2011-12-23T08:25:00.003-05:00

Not sure if it's the best idea to make changes to entries after I've already posted them. My most loyal readers are surely hitting "refresh" constantly, Mark Zuckerberg-style, so they're not likely to read the updated version, but rather the first, rough post, just after I impulsively hit "publish. "Oh well, I suppose that's the price of loyalty, and the price of my impatience, insistence on sending things immediately out into the universe, the one (there may be many) that is always sending so many things to me.

Almost out of time, but just for today

2011-12-22T23:50:00.010-05:00

11:15 PM
Wally and Alex are both asleep now. It's raining here on this island of Manhattan, raining on the blue and white Empire State Building, on the skeleton trees. It felt like spring today, and yet it was kind of okay and I couldn't figure out why. Not a creepy, global warming kind of warm day. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, too, high near 50. I'm trying to type quietly. Alex and Wally went to a neighbor's this afternoon so I could work on collecting nauseating facts for my gross-o-pedia. The world of horrifying insects is endless, not surprising since they make up, hmmm, what is it, I should know this, 2/3 of the number of different species of life on earth? An article from this September in the Times reviewed a book talking about how the study of insects has significant relevance to the study of human psychology and in particular the nature vs. nurture question, which is of course endlessly fascinating to any (relatively) new parent. Elizabeth Royte writes, "...because insects are rarely cared for by their parents and live mostly solitary lives, they make a handy tool for looking at the potential genetic basis for adult behaviors." I'm only now beginning to trace what my adult behaviors are, let alone where they came from.

On Sunday evening Wally and I went to a candlelit church service with a choir. Went to part of it, I should say. We lasted for four songs, though the gummy-bear to song ratio was rather high. Sometimes in the mornings after I drop Wally at school, I duck into St. Michael's church around the corner. It's beautiful in there, dark but full of burning candles, flowers up by the alter, and quiet choir music. There's a little chapel to the side where I sometimes sit. I gather my thoughts there, try to set myself on the good course for the day, to begin by being grateful. On the steps to the entrance are the words, "The truth above all." Hard to argue with that, still most of disagree on what even the most fundamental truths are.

It's almost midnight. I don't have much time now to get this post out, to keep up with the challenge I took from citibank's gauntlet. (Funny, the most valuable advice they gave came after I left them on Bank Transfer Day. Maybe you can only look at something objectively when you're no longer dependent on it. Or maybe their ad campaigns just really got a boost.) Write your story.

I am taking that to mean, for some reason, write here everyday. Writing here everyday keeps me writing more everywhere. It means I can't let myself off the hook. It holds me accountable. Like my cousins and I say playing Taboo at Thanksgiving, it "keeps me honest". (In the game, someone looks over the player's shoulder to make sure you don't say any of the forbidden words. In this case you're looking over my shoulder to make sure I punch in every day). Why though? Other than being held accountable to write, which is inherently a good thing. What is the point of writing every day? I don't need to answer that all in one sweep. I can do it little by little. That's what I'm realizing now, finally. I can immerse myself in the process. Commit myself to a daily practice. I can start where I am. "Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them."*

There’s a picture of me and my cousin Will from the early fall of 1999, at my grandmother’s birthday at the beautiful clubhouse we called the Casino in Laurel Beach, where our family had the cottage for so many years. I weaved in and out of the grand hall, alternating between adult conversations and playing with my young cousins. Will, the one who graduated from High School this past June, was just a tiny bit older than Wally is now. That’s how time works, Rach. You sound like you’re explaining the basics of time to someone who just arrived here from another galaxy. Where maybe time doesn’t exist. (The galaxy, I read today, may be losing energy. I can't blame it, really.

Will, along with his sister Moira and brother Charlie, are the teenagers who play with my sister’s kids and Wally at holidays now, like Dara and I were the teenagers who used to play with them. (Again, you’re describing the basic nature of time. It moves forward. You get older or die trying. There really isn’t any other choice.) Still, like the Twin Towers appearing in the wrong place in my timeline Rorschach test of memory*, when I think of Will, my first thought, for a split second, is of the little boy sitting on the porch of the Casino, swinging his leads and drinking grape juice.

There are certain people who are just landmarks of time, whose face, when they were born, you recognized immediately. Will is one of them. My older niece, Eliana, is another. They’re both the oldest in their families, and when I think about it, they both represented a major shift in family tradition. Will’s birth when I was 16 heralded the end to my sister and my reign as the kids in our extended family. Eliana’s birth, perhaps, signaled the end of young adult-hood. It is not surprising, then, that those two remain figures like in the Natalie Merchant song, “You’re frozen in my mind like the child that you never will be, will be again”. Who they are to me is who I am to myself. Their arrivals marked major transition points for me. To see them accurately, I have to first see myself that way. I think I’m beginning to. It feels like being free.

Major transition points. Maybe, like my rain-soaked graduation, my non-existent wedding, refusal to settle down or get a real job, or prepare for having a baby, they went by unacknowledged. It's Freud 101. If you don't say goodbye to certain periods of your life, they never become past.

There is a book I should read--The Season’s of a Man’s Life, Daniel Levinson. I have it here—how even across cultures (species?) we all go through roughly the same phases and transitions throughout our lives. I haven’t been able to plough through it. Yet I am recognizing now the importance of attending to transitions, even in the corny, overblown way our culture tends to perform the act of passing through the threshold. All of us—the ones who are hyperaware and actively engaged in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy—and those who block out every chance for self-reflection with sarcasm, Sierra Nevada and a status update—are living both our lives, one reported in real time, and one distorted, re-imaged, re-imagined, tangential, full of free associative thought and dream imagery. The second one I would trust more than anything else. Yet I do wonder how much what I'm still imagining is obscuring the view. The truth above all. That's what I'm seeking. That's what I'm after, in writing every day.

There was yesterday, December 21, when the bricklayers outside were driving me crazy. For moments at a time I forgot to be grateful because they are seering into my brain with those drills, making it hard to concentrate on the work I had to do and the work I wanted to do. Here’s something I want to do: finish rewriting my young adult novel. Reading over the beginning, one passage catches my attention. I used to think of this as the narrator leaving someone else behind, but today it is morphing into something else. Remember I wrote ages ago about how people in your dreams and real life are all the same things—extensions of yourself? Of course that’s obviously true for characters in stories you write. And here, both characters were me. The one moving forward and the one staying behind. Anyway, here's the passage from the novel. Thanks to citibank, my enemy, I have unearthed the manuscript again, 2 years after writing it for Nanowrimo (nothing like a meaningless deadline to motivate me).

**
I was moving beyond her, the way you’d feel about a best friend when you get together one day and she just want to play the same old games the same old way, and doesn’t want to hear about any of the new music or books or people that you met at camp and you realized that you were just kind of moving forward, and that she’s not. That you’re waving goodbye from a bus window and she doesn’t really know you’re waving, just thinks that you’re in a funny mood that day. But she’s getting smaller and smaller to where you can hardly even see her, and eventually you’ll get carsick if you don’t turn your head around and focus on the road up ahead.

I have to begin where I am. It feels like I'm finally here. Once I find it, Carl Sagan's "worthy goal" will keep me looking forward, even when--behind the scenes, instead of sleep--I'm sorting through the past.

-----------------------

*(I would have supposed, if asked in a half-dream state, that the events of 9/11 would split in fairly equal parts my time in New York, when in truth there were only 2 years before and have been 10 years since

*Bertrand Russell again (this guy is amazing)

*Good advice from the Godfather, "Keep you friends close, but your enemies closer."

Soundtrack: What are they doing in Heaven toda? by Bernice, Reagon, Yasmeen, and Michele Lanchester on Wade in The Water: Vol. 3: African American Gospel: The Pioneering Composers

We expelled ourselves from Eden

2011-12-21T13:11:00.005-05:00

This was made for a Carl Sagan tribute series. The text is his. Is that him reading? I have to find out. Maybe someone who listens will recognize his voice. I came across the video on Immoral Minority--one of the few political blogs out there where I've ever been able been able to find anything vaguely resembling the truth (though I think re: Sarah Palin he may take the mocking a little too far. She's just not worth that kind of vitriol anymore, and I think everything she says and does is funny enough without anyone needing to add to it). Anyway, this blew me away. Please watch it. Not right now, not when you're already running late and feeling overwhelmed. Later, if you remember, when you have time.

"We couldn’t help ourselves. We were starving for knowledge—created hungry, you might say. This was the origin of all our troubles. In particular, it is why we no longer live in a garden: We found out too much. So long as we were incurious and obedient, I imagine, we could console ourselves with our importance and centrality, and tell ourselves that we were the reason the Universe was made. As we began to indulge our curiosity, though, to explore, to learn how the Universe really is, we expelled ourselves from Eden. Angels with a flaming sword were set as sentries at the gates of Paradise to bar our return. The gardeners became exiles and wanderers. Occasionally we mourn that lost world, but that, it seems to me, is maudlin and sentimental. We could not happily have remained ignorant forever.  "

Jell-O in unexpected places

2011-12-20T08:17:00.002-05:00

My publicist at ABRAMS sent me this link yesterday. Daily Candy recommends Jiggle Shots for an awkward-Christmas-sweater holiday party.

Back in September, Epicurious has included it on a back-to-school roundup.

And New York's own Metro paper ran a piece in October.

How does all of this fit in with Last American Childhood? It doesn't, at all. I suspect these are the sorts of problems I will start to run into, posting everyday.

Conditions suitable to protoplasm

2011-12-19T18:47:00.005-05:00

"...if you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general on this planet will die out in due course: it is a stage in the decay of the solar system; at a certain stage of decay you get the sort of conditions of temperature and so forth which are suitable to protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in the life of the whole solar system. You see in the moon the sort of thing to which the earth is tending -- something dead, cold, and lifeless." Bertrand Russell

I think I should start posting everyday. At least something everyday, though I don't want this to turn into one of those "wordless wednesday" blogs. The problem is I am always playing catch-up, I always have these old entries floating around on scraps of paper and in my head, these updates, like the one I posted last night, that are a month old, these pieces I feel I need to fill in before I can get on to what I really need to say. But maybe I can just toss those aside, or if I want to be symbolic--rip them up, or maybe burn them just for the spectacle. There is a reason they haven't been posted yet. Maybe they are not present enough, real enough, honest enough, or maybe too much so, and if that's the case, I don't want to give into avoidance patterns. But I really don't know. I just realized like a week ago that maybe I'm just classic ADD and can't string a coherent thought together or manage to keep multiple drafts of stories in any kind of order so it's clear which is the latest one. I resist because I keep thinking -- that's not where I'm at anymore, I don't believe that right now, that's really not obsessing me but if I wrote about it people would think that it was. But at the same time there's some kind of narrative arc I want to follow, and those pieces floating away are part of it. I never knew until the other night reading Bertrand Russell that it's as the solar system is dying that conditions become hospitable to life. So when we appeared, and when I say "we" I mean we in a very broad sense, organisms that breathe, let's say, things were already on their way down. But wait, a quarter-of-a-billion years ago almost all life on earth, save maybe 5%, died out. And then the dinosaurs came along. And then they died out. Then we came along. The dinosaurs roamed the earth for about 160 million years, and we've been here, even at a great outside estimates, only about 200,000 (which still begs the question, why did God wait so freakin' long to send Jesus down here)? But given these numbers, which are not under debate, maybe this is all unnecessarily catastrophic thinking indicative of a colossal narcissistic personality disorder.

Update, November 21

2011-12-18T21:52:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving feels sort of scattered this year. On Thursday Wally and I will take a commuter train to New Haven, from there a bus to Hartford. My Uncle Billy and his family will pick us up and drive us the rest of the way to my parents’ house. Alex is staying in New York because long lost cousins from Spain announced last month they’d be visiting at Thanksgiving this year, making sure to add that the holiday “means nothing to them” but they know it’s important to us. A cousin in London and aunt in California jumped in on the plan. So they’ll all arrive tonight, converging in the rain on our house with Alex’s mom, sister, niece and nephew, for a family reunion, the link between them all--Alex’s dad—being in absentia, having died 91/2 years ago. Though, truth be told, Alex’s dad was in absentia for a good part of his childhood. When Alex was seven, his family moved from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Long Island, stayed for less than a year, then bounced back to Sao Paulo, minus the dad. Alex always expected one day he’d show up. Instead 7 years later, he hopped back with his mom and sister to North America and landed in the living room of an apartment in Queens with his dad again, an insta-family that lasted less than three years. Lots of back and forth in those days.

The continent hopping had begun a generation earlier. Alex’s dad was born in Spain, hence the long-lost cousins from Madrid, and moved to Brazil as a child. To complete the circle, I suppose, sometime in Junior High Wally should set his sights on Barcelona.

In other updates, the half marathon I was training for with my friend Eli turned into a Turkey Trot this coming Friday to support the Acton Food Coop. I don’t know how long it is exactly, but I think a Trot tends to max out at 5K. So, having set our sights for a 13-mile run however many months ago, we’ve now resigned ourselves to 3.

The Turkey Trot supports the Acton Food Pantry. I didn’t even realize they had one, I was telling my mom the other day. She used to volunteer at a soup kitchen in Concord, the neighboring town. On occasion, the rest of us would join her. I thought that was nearest meals-for-poor-people apparatus going on in those affluent Boston suburbs, but all along there’d been one right in our own town.

But last night I was putting back those papers I’d dug up to find my letter about taxes to the Boston Globe from 1999, and I came across the artifacts of my brief journalism career (even briefer than my 6^th month stint as a substitute teacher at MS 54) an article for Acton’s local paper about none other than the Acton Food Pantry. Not only have I heard of the food pantry, it turns out, I’d once interviewed the woman running it and then written an article about what she told me. So this is an update, I guess, not only for my loyal readers, but for myself and my own unreliable mind.

Training runs have taken on a new significance in light of the occupy movement. I tell myself endurance and speed are essential for a resistance fighter, as are the capacity to run when tired, cold, and wet. To run, no matter how much resistance you face. So I run in the cold, fall rain. I run with headaches. I run when my legs hurt. Out by the river, listening to Richard Butler’s California. I know the idea that I’m training as a resistance fighter just because I’ve held a few cardboard signs down at Zuccotti Square is beyond ludicrous. But out there on the windy piers along the Hudson River my imagination drives me, as it does most of the time when I’m alone. It doesn’t hurt that from those piers I have a straight shot of the Freedom Tower going up downtown at the site of the World Trade Center. The tower calls to me, and with it, the promise of revolution in the air in the streets below.

It was that sight that drew me down last Thursday to the Wall Street rally two days after the occupiers were thrown out of Zuccotti Park in a midnight raid. I had planned to attend the rally that evening. And I did that too, meeting my friend Ivan Drucker at Foley Square then marching across the Brooklyn Bridge. Just a little ways into the march, people around us started pointing, jaws started dropping. On the side of the Verizon building a message was broadcast above us in an anonymous light show; it was a dream, a bat-signal revelation, a moment of childlike wonder, proof that we’re not only living by fiction, but science fiction as well.

Some powerful, mystery person was telling us to look around. That we were part of a global uprising, that we should occupy Wall St, Oakland, Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, cities all over the world. Occupy Earth. The message ended with the words: Do not be afraid. Love.

It occurred to me that maybe I should write a separate OWS blog, but then the themes between OWS and LAC just had too much of an overlap. Like protecting childhood. Playing music as often as possible. Trying to be grateful. Trying to be fair. Spending lots of time outdoors. Valuing history, art and opposing ideas. Thinking it’s reasonable to start dancing where ever you are. Living simply. Not spending money on things that don’t matter. Keeping things little for kids so the world can be big. Not missing out on your life.

Wally goes to the preschool I mentioned back in June, a few blocks away now. That does feel small-town and is pretty incredible luck that he got in there. I can easily drop him off and pick him up, walking along quite possibly the ugliest, dirtiest 6 blocks in Manhattan, full of exhaust, massive trucks that force you to jut out into 10^th ave to get by, and weird streets (to the tunnel?) that cut through the streets.

On his first day there, parents were allowed to stay for the first hour and then came the big goodbye. Wally was already involved in the train set and barely looked up when I left. “Bye mom. See you later.” Separation anxiety was not something we had to confront. Even the other day when he saw me at a volunteer meeting in the hall he simply said, “What are you doing here, Rachel?” and continued on his way.

His backpack comes home packed with paper crowns and apple tree paintings. I get notes on a regular basis about how he “won’t sit”, or “can’t sit still”, or is “having trouble sitting still”, but none of that comes as a surprise. Then after school we meet our neighborhood friends in the playground. No more awkward mingling, no more soul-deadening conversations about how to stop toddlers from chewing on board books.

Now that I have time, sometimes, to pause for a second, I ask myself: What just happened? The days used to be such a push for me –schlepping Wally uptown and downtown and around town to various therapies, meeting friends in faraway places, racing through errands without knocking over too many displays, always having to wake Wally up from his nap to get somewhere, then flying off while he’s in tears.

What just happened? It could apply to many things. From a baby to a preschooler, or the thirteen years from my college graduation, or the polar ice caps melting. Or even just the trees outside my window. Remember the pink trees from April? Here they are today.

My sister once told me that when you have kids, the days are long but the years go by fast. It’s nearly 8 in the morning, and Wally’s still asleep. He is on antibiotics, and has been staying up ‘til 10, but…still…it’s nearly 8 and he’s STILL ASLEEP. I feel semi-functional. These days I feel semi-not totally crazy.

It seemed like those 4 am winter mornings might never end. Maybe the craziest was the December trip to Massachusetts three years ago. Obama had just been elected, I was still working full-time and my parents new condo didn’t have much furniture. They had our pitbull, Sky, and Wally was—at 10 months—hurling himself through space. On these 4 am winter mornings he was not only awake, but bounding all over the house, running without holding on, climbing stairs, and crashing into Sky.

What on earth can I do? I would think in those strange hours. Even if my parents got up early, by 8 or so, I still had hours to go to keep quiet these two creatures who could not be confined.

Now Sky lives on a farm near New Hampshire with four other dogs. Wally is about to head to preschool. Obama can no longer hope to run on change. Or, I think he can, but most of my comrades at OWS, it seems, no longer believe him. And I’m here at my kitchen table—my grandmother’s table—thinking I’ve got to find the letter the government wrote my grandmother to let her know how much her late husband had contributed to setting up social security. That would be fascinating, if I could find it and write about that. I’m here at the table in a quiet room, sorting through things and making them murkier, writing, like I have been, as the springtime turned slowly into autumn.

All hail the...

2011-12-17T15:08:00.001-05:00

King?

Alex took Wally to Scandinavia House at 38th Street today so I could get work done on my endless collection of facts about blood, guts, pus, spit, slime, and tarantulas for that gross-o-pedia project I mentioned a while back.

Accepting the truth

2011-12-16T15:21:00.001-05:00

There's a giant blue banner in Union Square station put there by citibank. It says, "Write your story." I see it on my way out and think of the words of the Jewish philosopher Moses Ben Maimon "You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes."

The Boy in the Purple Tutu

2011-12-03T18:27:00.007-05:00

For the first three years of his life, Wally was what you might call a classic boy's boy. He was strong. He didn’t talk much. He liked to jump, push, crash, bump, bang, wrestle, punch, and kick. His resting state was dirty and wet, clomping around in muddy shoes or—even better—bare feet, outside, on gravel or mulch or hot pavement. He liked cars and trucks okay but loved trains more than anything. In the past year started learning the names of the subways, explaining to strangers that the E goes to Queens and World Trade Center, the 1 to South Ferry, the 6 to Brooklyn Bridge, and so on. Sometimes I wondered, as I mentioned before on this blog, if Wally didn’t have any real delays or issues but simply, like a big dog in a small New York City apartment, couldn’t run around as much as he needed to, and was therefore always going to seem a bit out of control.

Until recently, this miniature guy's guy had little time for playing dress up, drawing pictures or attending pretend tea parties. All those things required staying still, the one thing he was unwilling to do. Wally wanted to be outside digging holes, wrestling with dogs, exploring the neighborhood. In late August, people began to mention Halloween (if Christmas decorations go up before Oct 31, everything else naturally has to shift back, right?). What was Wally going to be? A commuter rail, naturally. Or maybe Amtrak.

But then—something changed. The fascination with trains that had dominated so much of his early years began to give way to something a little bit…frillier. Digging through a box of toys in my niece's playroom, Wally found something pink that intrigued him. He let go of the wind-up car he’d been holding, flung off the walky-talky he’d hitched to his pants, and with the help of his cousins Eliana and Leah, slipped on a…tutu. Tutu! Even the name sounded just right for toddler-speak. He spun around. The world went pink.

Eliana and Leah take dance classes at a local school. Wally idolized them. It was a simple transitive relationship—of course he’d want to be a ballerina too. At first, I was relieved. Finally, at age three and a half, after nearly three years of running around like a train that fell off the tracks, after a year and a half of ignoring therapists who “modeled” imaginative play, Wally was pretending. This was a giant leap, and not just across the stage. This train-crazy kid was finally "expanding his imagination". The rote and repetitive kinds of play—rolling a coal car back and forth endlessly, making everything (blocks, pencils, you name it) into a freight train, self-stimming with a giant pool noodle by getting down on the floor to watch it fly back and forth—all that crap could start to be phased out. This was a milestone we missed somewhere a while back but were finally catching up to. Wally was engaged enough with the tutu to sustain a scene, to inhabit a role.

After that, whenever Wally brought up the tutu, I smiled. That was fun, wasn’t it? I said. And fortune smiled on us. On the phone a week before school started my sister mentioned she had a bunch of toys and clothes gathered up, ready to give away. She was bringing over Lincoln Logs. Little People. Various gender-neutral shirts of which there are few, my nieces’ tomboyish early years having quickly receded into the distant past. At the end of the conversation, she paused. Did I want the tutu? It didn’t fit them anymore. Yes! Of course! It was unorthodox, but it wasn’t ill-advised, was it? And anyway, who cares, whatever, he’d love it. But even as I said yes, something in my stomach kind of dropped. Or maybe that’s just the distorted view I have now, gazing back up the shimmering, icy surface of a strangely slippery slope.

Skip to my sister and nieces visit the following weekend. They came laden with wonderful hand-me down toys and books, and the pièce de résistance: the pink, rose-decorated tutu. Wally put it on and twirled around the living room. He danced on top of the bed. We had to claw it off of him at bath time. First thing in the morning he cried out for it. I continued to encourage the tutu even as his fascination with it started to seem a bit extreme. Alex was fine with it. The only thing that drove us nuts was that the tutu was too big and had to be fixed with a clothespin to stay on. Every minute or so, after a series of pliés, Wally would come over holding the gathered extra material on his hip and ever so sweetly ask, "May you help me fix the tutu?"

As the days passed, the irritation of constantly fixing the tutu began to develop into a kind of insular friction, with a lot of sighs and rolled eyes in our house in the evenings. I was afraid that we (maybe more Alex) was becoming fed up with the whole thing not because of the gender-ambiguity issues that surrounded it but because of the simple practical issue of having to constantly attend to it.

So the story gets even more bizarre. Cut to Buy Buy Baby one day after school where there’s a rack of infant-sized tutu skirts with elastics on clearance for $3 each. I have never bought a piece of clothing for Wally save maybe a swimsuit. But I thought: if I can eliminate the friction around fixing the tutu, it will become less of a hot-button issue. Maybe if there's not the power struggle of us having to be Cinderella’s mice at Wally’s beck and call to fix it, it will become less valuable, less of a prized possession. Maybe he’ll even go back to begging for a model E train for Christmas.

Didn't work.

Instead the wearing of the purple tutu—a tutu now that wasn’t handed down, that didn’t just appear one day alongside a box of old wooden puzzles, but one I bought him—(how to explain that to people?) just became ever more of a compulsion and necessity. It began showing up not only over pants, but without any pants at all, not only inside the apartment but out, not only among family members, but all over at the playground. How?

Be careful bargaining with preschoolers. The only thing they’re willing to trade is something they were never allowed to have in the first place. For them it’s always a win-win.

It’s raining on Wally’s first day of preschool. He already has on sweatpants, a long-sleeve shirt, sneakers, and the ladybug jacket handed-down from his cousin Leah. I thought it was axiomatic that you don’t wear tutus to school. Not so to a three-year-old who had never been to school before.

After much stomping and flailing about, Wally agrees not to wear the tutu to school as long as he can wear it immediately.

“Tutu is for after school?”

“Yes, after. I guess. Definitely not in school.”

“When you pick me up I can put it on?”

“Maybe. Just take it off and let’s go. We’re going to be late.”

Preschoolers are like those Vaseline-y pigs in, what is that children’s book where the wolves can’t catch the slippery pigs? Wally just kept slipping right out of my hands and running off to another room. Finally I caught him.

“Tutu is for the playground?” He said, as I wrestled it off him.

“Okay, fine. The playground, whatever. Let’s go.”

And so it was said. The playground was protected ground.

To the boy wearing the purple tutu in our playgrounds around Chelsea, the reactions have been mixed. Many moms are supportive. As they pass by they sometimes shout out, “Great style.” Or "That's so sweet." They tell Wally, "I love your skirt." Or tell me, "That's great. He’s an individual.” Others think he’ll be a fashion designer. Some think he’s just a preschooler. “That’s so 4. I bet he never takes it off, right?”

Right.

Many kids are confused.

"Is that a boy or a girl?"

"It's a boy wearing a skirt.”

“Are you sure?”

“Trust me, it's a boy."

Some are critical, "Why are you dressed like a princess?" I've even seen a group pointing and laughing on one occasion. That’s what really got to Alex. He doesn’t mind Wally wearing the tutu, but hates the idea of us sending him out to the wolves, with no protection, acting like everything’s normal. “We should at least let him know it’s not what most boys wear.”

In the elevator riding up the other day a neighbor seemed supportive. "Let him wear it." Then followed with the one-two-punch: "The kids will tease him so badly he'll never go near it again."

One neighborhood friend said hi to Wally recently then turned to me. "I'll pretend I didn't see that." I said something back about how I thought in Chelsea of all places the tutu wouldn’t be a big deal. The friend seemed annoyed. "Gay doesn't mean cross dressing".

Cross-dressing! I guess not. You'd be surprised how many times cross-dressing has come up lately in conversation. The tutu has led to strangers issuing warnings about "turning him gay”. Others talk about crystal children and advanced forms of evolution. People have mentioned Gender Identity Disorder (a title seems a bit offensive but I guess is the only way to secure funding), and offered advice about resources for transgendered youth. Even my father, who does research designed to help increase services to transgendered vets, saw Wally's getup and said, "What happened to that tool belt we got him?" Mainly I just have to repeatedly explain that he's a boy, to looks of horror, when people assume otherwise. A boy wearing a tutu just really bothers a lot of people.

Before school in the mornings, more bargaining has been taking place. It is not just the tutu now that Wally adores, but everything girls get to wear. He wakes up now and then asking if he is a girl. He stares in the mirror pulling his hair back. He goes in to school some days with pigtails, other days a headband, a necklace, a bracelet or a ribbon tied around his shirt. His teacher thinks it’s a good idea to “phase out” the object of fixation, to gradually transition to more socially appropriate things. Alex gets me to agree to “tutu-on days” and “tutu-off days”, but the purple tutu continues as a regular feature on the playground. Some people are horrified, some critical; almost everyone takes notice, or else just assumes he’s a girl. He doesn’t seem to mind any reaction at all. The teasing does not bother him. He is not wired like me.

Alex says I am naïve and suburban, having come from a town where my friend M. could wear a ski mask into the Maynard Pool Hall and a college where my friends and I could chant offensive songs in the aisle at food court. But in the NYC public school hopefully Wally will attend in a few years, boys don’t wear tutus. It’s not so much, “What will people think?” as “What will people do?”

I find myself midnight googling "preschool boys who wear dresses and say, ‘I'm a girl’”. I have to admit, secretly, that part of me thinks it’s better to let him wear what he wants rather than force him to think he has to be a girl to be able to. By resisting something, don’t you make it stronger? Not that there’s anything wrong with it. Not that it matters either way.

Of course Halloween is coming up, and Wally wants to be—you guessed it—a princess. My nieces who in other years were all kinds of gender-neutral things from butterflies to ghosts to pumpkins—showed Wally their beautiful costumes this year: a flamenco dancer and a cowgirl. Both costumes looked like princesses to him. To me it seemed like a good idea for him to be a princess. Isn’t Halloween the one occasion when you can dress however you want, without regard for what’s socially appropriate? Isn’t social inappropriateness, outrageousness, disguise and outlandishness kind of the whole point?

Alex’s mother has zero tolerance for the whole situation. She changes the subject when Wally touches her earrings or tugs at her skirt. In her world, gender roles are not ambiguous. Boys don’t wear skirts. Boys are not princesses for Halloween. She sends him home from a mid-October visit with a brand new Thomas the Train costume tucked in his bag.

On Halloween, Wally’s teachers let him wear the tutu along with the train costume. He tells people he’s a “princess and a train”. The teachers call him a “prince”. Wally is supremely happy, flouncing around. He is still getting looks, but he still doesn’t care.

Then it’s back to the daily routine, and back to the hard part again. Back to gray pants, (“Why do I have to have a pants day every day?”) and navy blue turtlenecks with a ribbon around the waste that “can be like a tutu”. What Wally really wants is not the costume, or the tutu, or the princess gown, but just to wear a skirt. Like Penny, like Abby, like June, like Lilly, like Katie, like Skylar…like Eliana and Leah. Why can’t he just wear a skirt? “No costumes allowed in school” doesn’t satisfy. Those kids are not wearing costumes, they’re wearing dresses or skirts. For people with names like Anna and Willa, everyday is a tutu-on day. Even terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad days. Even in school.

I know I’m supposed to be continuing the phase out but I’ve flat-lined at alternating, with a ribbon or bow substitute for school. Most days I pick different battles. And I am stuck on how to explain to Wally why—other than at dress-up times—he can’t wear a skirt – not to the playground, not to school, not to a party, not to Thanksgiving. What is the reason, really?

Because I don’t want him to be made fun of? Because I don’t want to send him out unprotected into a cruel world when he already has his various quirks with a giant “kick me” sign on his back? The tutu is getting pretty torn and ragged now. Will a Jewish explanation do? “It’s a Shmatta.” How about the WASP approach: “It’s simply not done.” And many moms who see him in second position about to barrel down the slide continue to be supportive, saying of course boys like girly things – sparkles, wands, headbands, pink shoes, sequins, glitter and the like. Why wouldn’t they? Many days I set off from the playground full of renewed energy to defend the boy in the purple tutu by my side for whatever critical comments are about to come our way.

It’s December now, and one day I realize the “I’m a girl” questions are being replaced with…“I’m getting bigger?” That’s an easy one. “Yes, you are.”

“I can ride the Acela now?” That’s the fast train.

“Not yet,” I answer.

“When I’m four?”

“When you’re a little older than that.”

“I’m four now?”

“Not yet. Soon.”

The tutu days continue. Every other day, as soon as he gets home, Wally runs to his room and slips the purple tutu on over his pants, tag in the back.

“Wally, listen.” I said today, before we head to the playground. I’m still trying to figure out how to explain what it is I have to explain, to protect him, to let him know that I think it’s okay, but some people don’t. You’re a rebel not a slave? Express yourself, but not everyone's going to approve? It’s a fashion statement, but not a common one? You're okay, we're okay with it, even if your friends are not? How do I put it, simply, clearly, so that something that doesn’t really make sense (boys can’t wear tutus) makes sense to him?

He’s skipping ahead, laughing. “Wally, hold on. I just have to tell you one thing.” We’re on the walkway across the street now, heading past the blacktop.

“Wally, wait.” He’s darting around the corner, tearing down the sidewalk to the playground gate. “I just have to tell you something, hold on.”

He’s not listening. He’s not turning around. “Wally," I have to shout now, "Boys don’t wear tutus.”

He stops long enough to turn back and smile. Silly mom, clearly that’s not the case.

“Sometimes they do,” he says. And he’s off.

2011-11-20T15:56:00.003-05:00

Was everyone a tomboy back then, or did it have more to do with all the hand-me down clothes?

It's the process, people

2011-11-19T23:26:00.009-05:00

What does Occupy Wall Street want? What are its demands. Policy recommendations? It's all well and good to be angry about the recession, but what would you have us do, exactly?

All these questions maybe miss the point.

My mom called me while I was standing in Foley Square in downtown Manhattan on Thursday night where over 30,000 people gathered for a rally before making their way over the Brooklyn Bridge. She told me she'd passed by protestors gathered in Acton (my hometown, in the suburbs of Boston) with 99% signs. That she beeped and waved and sent money to Occupy Boston.

I was thrilled to hear Acton was occupied and I guess, proud. It has always seemed to be a place of civic responsibility, a town that takes pride in its proximity to the birthplace of the American Revolution. But I hadn't thought of it in relation to this recent movement, one which, to quote a protestor marching ahead of me Thursday, made me "optimistic for the first time in my adult life".

I went home that night and searched for Occupy Acton. I found a video of their occupation, and listened to some guy talk about Acton's democratic tradition and the fact that they continue to carry on an open town meeting. That's how they make decisions. When there's a conflict or big decision to be made, citizens of the town show up in the High School auditorium, make their points, argue face to face, then vote and call it for the majority. By participating, you agree to comply with the majority rule. You may or may not agree with that ruling, but the important point is you've agreed to abide by it.

There are only two major, really heated votes I remember in taking place during my Acton tenure. In one case, my father was deeply involved, engaging neighbors, conducting research, drafting proposals, and finally making an impassioned speech in front of several hundred locals. In both these cases, we left on the losing side. We were disappointed. That night after my dad's speech we pulled out of the parking lot seething with a mix of sadness and fury. Then the next day we woke up, and went about our business, and complied with the will of the opposition.

As the NYTimes argued beautifully in its Opinion pages after Clinton was impeached in 1999, the test of a democracy isn't the first president ruling peaceably, it's the first person voted out of office packing his bags and going home. The party impeaching the president had not gotten over their guy's (Bush Senior) single-term presidency. They never got over Clinton beating him in 1992. They were using millions in taxpayer money and every tactic they had to exact revenge on the guy who moved in after him. They did not accept the will of the people.

The Republicans in Congress today have made it clear--they're not even trying to hide it--that the single most important goal for them is to get Obama out of office. They are willing to sacrifice the country's health and safety in order to do that. They've bragged about it. Back in 1801, when John Adams got his suitcase out of the White House closet and started tossing his shirt vests and stockings inside, he was probably seething and just a little eensy bit disappointed. But the people had spoken, and he deferred to their will. He went home (to Massachusetts). If Obama loses in 2012, we'll expect him to do the same thing.

What we can't do is suppress votes or let banks create policy for us. We can't let the courts decide that corporations are human beings except that they can never be charged with a crime. We can't let money control the media. We can't let the media keep reporting on facts as if they were matters of legitimate debate simply because the one dissenting scientist out of 20,000 leading international experts has more money backing him than the other 20,000 combined.We can't let corporations donate obscene sums of money to political campaigns and therefore handpick the public servents that serve them rather than the public.

Enter Occupy Wall Street.

Occupy protestors aren't there to draft policy, at least not yet. They're not there to make budget demands or recommendations. What they're there for is to show that the 99% still exist, even though it hasn't seemed like it for at least a decade or two. They're there to say that we've lost our way, that we're no longer participating in our government, that--forget outcome--we're not engaged in the process anymore. The democratic process has been hijacked. The people are not being heard. Remember James Carville in Clinton's 1992 campaign, the one where he beat Bush Senior, saying, "It's the economy, stupid"? Well, here's today's equivalent: It's the process, stupid.

The point is: we are the 99% and we need to reclaim our democracy from war profiteers and bankers that engage in illegal speculation and then appoint themselves to top government positions. We don't need to draft charts comparing OWS objectives to the Tea Party's. We shouldn't pit one against the other. Of course the anonymous corporations making a killing off class warfare they've engaged in for 40 years would love to see that. "See how much you guys hate each other? You're never going to agree."

It's true. We may never agree on outcome. Tea Partiers may want to go on cutting taxes for millionaires, dismantling Social Security (the single most effective anti-poverty program ever, so well-funded it has lent money to the rest of the government for decades), and destroying public education.

But what we all agree on is the point that we no longer feel we're being represented by our government. We don't have to agree on the outcome of our decisions, all we have to agree on is the decision-making process, and compliance with the outcome of a decision-making process that's fair.

True patriots love their country, and believe it can be better. They're willing to face opposition to make it that way. They're willing to speak up, speak out, occupy, hold candles, be arrested, face twisted expressions, pepper spray, rubber bullets and silent disdain. In our 235-year history, millions have given their lives to protect that right for the rest of us. If you're confused about what occupiers want, think back to junior high history. If you're still confused, ask yourself why. Then try to answer. Come down to your town square, local rally, or Kelly's Corner on Main Street in Acton, Massachusetts. Honor your right to civic participation. It's an essential part of democracy.

From the Shadows to the Marketplace

2011-11-07T20:25:00.008-05:00

It’s a good thing I’ve spent the past year or so digging myself out from sinkhole of distracting social obligations because I am now in the process of digging myself into a vital social obligation and by that I mean, supporting the Occupy movement. I’m hesitant now to even say Occupy Wall Street because I’ve already offended at least one banker friend and scared off nearly everyone who spends the day occupying a desk in any kind of corporation at all (which sort of includes me in much of my freelance work).

One thing I wanted to make clear is that I support the movement not as an under-employed, underserved individual, but as quite the opposite, one—as I’ve mentioned before on this blog and I hope made clear in all my accounts—whose been enormously privileged my entire life from every possible point of view. I went to fantastic schools, public (through high school) and private (college). My low-interest student loans are manageable. I’ve gotten many jobs without putting in much effort to get them and gotten demoted once I was there for putting in too much. I live in subsidized middle-income housing right smack dab in one of the greatest cities in the world. Although I have an antiquated flip phone and I’d consider myself one of the least invested in my appearance of any of my friends (my appearance itself can attest to that) I still have too many clothes, way too much too eat, way too many gadgets (including a Garmin GPS running tracker which I can’t get around to charging!) and way too many things in general. Wally’s room is overflowing with toys and clothes--almost all gifts and hand-me-downs. In addition to a few guitars, a bass, and a keyboard, I actually own a grand piano (although I’m not sure where it is). I’ve been to Europe four times. I go on a summer vacation every year. The water that comes pouring out of the tap here is clean, the grocery stores are stock full of FDA-inspected produce (bugs in boc choy not withstanding) and I’m surrounded by public parks and playgrounds. I have health insurance as does Wally thanks to Alex’s job and the wonders of domestic partnership. Wally goes to a special ed preschool the state and city pay for, hoping to “mainstream him” as soon as possible and recoup the cost but it's a gamble and they may not. When I worked full-time for Barnes & Noble publishing I made $12,000 more a year than an amount that would already have put me in the category of the richest 1% of people in the world ($38,000).

So I am not joining in the OWS movement as a laid-off, disenfranchised, down-on-my-luck, struggling freelance mom, but as someone whose been given so much and accepts the responsibility that comes with that. (See: Spiderman, JFK, and the Bible.) My great-grandparents and one grandfather came here as refugees or poor farmers. After that, all four grandparents graduated from college; two earned masters degrees. (Then there’s me: regression to the mean.) Our family got to live out the American Dream. The system worked out great, for us.

But not for everybody. These days, not even for most people. To stay silent in the face of peaceful protests trying to bring attention to that fact doesn't feel right. If nothing else, how could I explain that to Wally? To stay neutral or even intrigued but skeptical –“Yeah I get what they’re doing down there, sort of, but the whole dirty hippy/anarchy thing just skeeves me out”—is a slap in the face to my inheritance, to my Jewish and Irish ancestors who were all outsiders in their day. I’m not an insider at Goldman Sachs, but I am an insider in that I grew up in a stable home in an upper-middle class town in a peaceful, prosperous time. My dad worked for the government, which meant compared to my friends' parents he never made much money but outside of a few threatened or real government shut-downs, we did not live in fear that he would lose his job. How could I be complicit with a system that now denies hard-working people not only an advantage but even a chance to attend a safe public school, work for a fair wage, obtain health insurance, or dig out from under college debt?

In this blog, I’ve been trying—in a patchwork way—to sketch out a way forward as a mom, and as a person, trying not to let the strident voices of "What will people think?", social pressures, path of least resistance, commercialism and capitalism drown out everything else. In a mostly lighthearted way, I've tried to engage in Jung’s process of individuation, of “becoming”. The role of parent threatens to obliterate the self, but I think I've finally realized that to become a better parent, I have to become more myself. I would have to come to a full stop in that process if I wasn't willing to speak up, at least a little, to throw my voice into the Occupy mix. I can’t teach Wally to share on the playground then show him I don't care when our society abandons the practice altogether.

Why do we teach our kids to share? Why is that so fundamental as a parent? Because that’s “what friends do”. Because it prevents fights. Because not sharing is not socially acceptable. Because it keeps people from getting sad or angry. Because our kids will be more well-liked. Because they'll do better in school. Because it keeps the society, the system—in this case, the playground—in working order, keeps it from degenerating into the Lord of the Flies. Because it’s fair. But most importantly, sharing is part of a social contract we agree to by being part of a community. We are human, we live in groups, we look out our neighbors, we sink or float together; that is what we do. It's not every man for himself. The race is not to the swiftest. It's not a dog eat dog world, or at least it shouldn't be. (Any more semi-relevant cliches I can toss in there?)

Sometimes it may not seem exactly fair to have to share. Maybe one kid brought a brand new scooter and he didn’t even get a chance to try it before the teeming mobs of scooter-less kids demanding a turn descended on him. Maybe the scooter kid paid for the scooter with his hard-earned allowance money. It could be he spends an hour every night after dinner washing dishes and sweeping the floor while the other kids—the ones who want to take an unearned turn—sprawl out watching Phineas and Ferb. But it doesn’t matter. You still share. You just do. You take a turn yourself—you don't let them steamroll right over you—but you give others a turn as well. It’s how humans operate. And besides, for every kid watching Phineas and Ferb there were probably 10 more washing dishes whose parents couldn't afford to pay them to do it. So that's not fair either, but they're there, on the same playing field as you with your overflowing piggy bank. You share. It’s the kind of playground you want to play on, the kind of world you want to live in—the one maybe your grandparents lived in. If they all came here “with nothing” (and people universally report their immigrant ancestors' experience this way), then someone must have shared with them, whether it was a relative, neighbor, friend, employer, teacher who taught them, police person who protected them, or government that believed in giving people a new deal. Someone must have. You can work hard, but you can’t pull yourself up entirely by your own bootstraps. You’ll look ridiculous and you won’t get anywhere.

So that’s kind of my version of Michael Moore’s letter about how he can be in the 1% and support the other 99%. In this fight I may not look it but I believe I am coming from the side of privilege; I hope in the end I am left standing on the right side of history.

It occurred to me that because of my ambiguous freelance work status, falling-apart furniture, generally ragged appearance (complete with blood-stained shoes), and the fact that I now make less than 1/5 of what I used to, (this time with a kid), that I could easily be mistaken for a---dirty hippy? (hope not), angry female with a guitar? (ugh), anarchist? (don’t flatter yourself--you shop at Whole Foods and have a really comfortable bed)---but you know, mistaken for someone who feels that I deserve more. If anything, I deserve less. But I do think we’ve all been left out because our voices have been lost, and we all deserve a better playground for our kids to play in, if nothing else. What’s the point of riding around in our shiny new scooters if some people haven’t even gotten a turn to see how badly they'd wipe out? And one kid hoarding a whole bunch of new toys and refusing to share them is just sh*tty and annoying and ruins the whole vibe. (Especially when he wiped out the other kids' savings accounts to get them. Then took a public bailout. Then made record profits. (Okay playground metaphor straining against its limits. But that kid hoarding all the toys always seems to be having the most miserable time of all, doesn't he?)

The main thing OWS is trying to do is give us a voice, to ask for our opinions--that's why they keep saying it's not a protest really, it's participation. They want to make a small peace offering to democracy, to say--we still believe in an open dialogue and making decisions by majority rule that will benefit the greatest number of people. That’s partly what makes it so damn inscrutable. The assembly is all of us. All with different opinions. Or it should be, at least.

Do any of you recognize the title of this post? The line right before it is "Fortune calls". It's pretty clear now that starting on September 17, it's been calling. In the song there's a palace of mirrors, a coldblooded moon, merchants and thieves, hungry for power. In it, false idols fall. Toward the end of the song comes the first reference to the title, in the lines "Eden is burning, Either brace yourself for elimination or else your hearts must have the courage..."

Get it now?

("for the Changing of the Guards").

2011-10-31T22:36:00.002-04:00

Highline near 14th Street, Halloween

Pre-Occupied

2011-10-26T23:09:00.020-04:00

I've been pre-occupied. Just now I went searching for a piece of personal memorabilia that pops into my head whenever I think about Occupy Wall Street or hear Elizabeth Warren’s talk about companies growing rich partly thanks to common roads and publicly-funded law enforcement.

Among the notebooks and papers I have falling out of every drawer in no order whatsoever, I was somehow able to locate a letter I sent the Boston Globe in 1999. I wrote it on the commuter train back from my internship at Senator Kerry's. I was in that idealist post-graduation phase then, living with my parents and trading days between Kerry's downtown office and the early shift at Starbucks in the neighboring town of Concord. Easy to be idealistic when you have nothing to worry about, right? I wanted to work on environmental issues and I wanted to write. In college I'd learned about climate change, deforestation, and ozone depletion. As an intern in the Massachusetts Senators office, environmental issues were local and personal. A fisherman out of work because of new fishing regulations, a lifelong resident of Cape Cod trying to hold onto her family’s house now on public land in a national park. The issues were muddy. It was hard to be righteous. Environmental protection sometimes came at high personal cost. But, balanced against individual happiness, the common good was the prevailing theme.

Driving to Starbucks on my off days in the barren pre-dawn winter streets of Concord, I thought only rarely of the revolution that had taken place steps away from where I handed out Maple Oat Nut scones to wealthy locals willing to pay as much for a cup of coffee as the current hourly minimum wage (then, $5.25 in Mass, now $8). No matter how many of my friends heard the call for social, environmental, or economic justice in those years, it never sounded grand or sweeping and I don't know why. Were we too comfortable? Did we have too many things on our To-Do lists? Were we just too focused on our own creative visions? (Paint supplies and guitars amps--artsy and edgy but not environmentally friendly.) Radical unrest and collective social change, that kind of thing belonged to the 60s, our parents' generation. MLK, JFK, those leaders were long gone. Corporate America and the writers at Rolling Stone got along. The Republicans were wrong --obsessed with a frivolous impeachment -- but seemed fairly harmless. The Nation was right but whiny and hopeless. The cold war was over. Even if there weren’t many, women could be CEOs, minorities from impoverished neighborhoods could go to great schools. The hole in the ozone hadn't seemed to spell ecological disaster after all. It was there (we created it), but off vaguely over Greenland somewhere. Like most troubling things, it was someone else’s problem. Dylan played in the background, but we had indie rock to give us our own slightly dissenting (if fuzzy and indistinguishable) voice, and that’s all we seemed to need. Did we get lost in there somewhere, riding high on the technology bubble after college that burst and scattered most of us in still pretty okay places? Landing somewhere in the realm of--I know I should care more, but I don't--let's go to happy hour. We were after the Me-generation, at the cusp of the igeneration but not raised in it. We'd known a time when people talked at dinner, wrote letters [I have many -- overflowing those drawers again, up through 1999!!], used in-between moments to think or pause or reflect rather than pretend to connect. Through most of high school we still handed in final papers written by hand.

In my house we had a computer very early on (1983), which didn't quite jive with the neighborhood we lived in. (I have to admit I always enjoyed the first 30 seconds when a new friend came over and thought we lived in a mansion until the sprawling houses came into view as something the friend had maybe never seen: condominiums.) For me the best thing about the computer was a game called King's Dominion. It was one of the first with a graphic interface. You had to get past moats and dragons and poison to get the sword or whatever it was on the throne in the castle. When you got to the edge of each screen you pressed an arrow button for the next screen and then literally waited, just waited, like 3 full minutes at least for the next page to load.

Back then, waiting was still okay. It wasn't something you hated. It wasn't something you had to run screaming from, in fact you often did it happily. Waiting out in the driveway for a friend to arrive. Waiting to get home to see if someone called you back. Waiting for your birthday--because maybe you'd get that remote control car or cabbage patch doll you wanted so badly. You didn't already have it, and you didn't know for sure if you'd get it or not. It was a possibility, which is the greatest thing in the world. I got a pogo ball one year for my birthday. My best friend Heather got one too and for weeks and weeks at recess as soon as the bell rang all the kids in the class ran outside formed two lines to get a turn to jump. It amazes me still to think about it. First, the civility of the turn-taking was so classic McCarthy-Towne, our progressive (public—thank you, taxpayers without kids who still felt it a worthwhile endeavor to educate local schoolchildren) elementary school, and second, that with all these loaded families, no one else's parents bought their kid a pogo ball. You didn't get everything you wanted. Two pogo balls was surely enough for 26 kids to share. Besides lining up giggling with anticipation was way better than a yard full of 6th graders all bouncing alone.

You waited a lot then. Waited to see if your friend would write you back from summer camp. Waited for the results of a backyard experiment. Waited for the nightly news to see what happened that day. (Speaking of, can you believe this quote is from 1854, Thoreau in Walden: “Hardly a man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, ‘What's the news?’ as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels ... Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe". Doesn’t this sound just like us now?) You waited for your mom or dad to get home to find out how their day was. What do you ask people when they walk in the door home from work now? You already know what kind of apple they ate on their walk home and which trash can they hurled the core into. I remember--even in 1994--sending away for Weezer lyrics by mail and checking the mailbox each day to see if they had arrived yet (Say in ain't so).

Now the background noise of dissent is gaining momentum, and, with Occupy Wall Street, it feels like something we didn’t know we were waiting for all this time finally happened. And the chant seems to align itself with the sentiment from this 12-year-old letter. (The two follow-ups The Globe published can be seen in the previous post.) I hope it’s not in bad taste to put this out again given that the initial target is now dead. (Keep in mind this doesn't even refer to the insider trading, housing bubble, mortgage crises, relaxed regulations, insane corporate greed, privatized gains, etc. that finally led to a collapse of the system in 2008.)

The rich owe society for the benefits they receive

What William F. Buckley Jr. overlooks in his plea on behalf of the wealthy (“Is capitalism petering out?” Commentary, March 1) is that they became wealthy at the expense of those who did not – the working poor who provided cheap labor and a mass market for their products.

Citing what he considers basic tenets of the Constitution and a “metaphysical regard for property,” Buckley argues that the wealthy should be allowed to keep more of the money they earn. Perhaps he would be right if they earned that money only as a result of some combination of hard work, talent, good luck and good timing.

But the truth is that they are part of a system that functions by keeping 36.5 million people below the poverty line, 12 million workers earning minimum wage, and an immeasurable number of Americans paying the real cost of big business and big industry - - air pollution, water contamination, depleted resources, loss of wildlife, loss of open space, and the widespread and often life-threatening health problems associated with environmental degradation.

The conclusion is simple and yet lost on Buckley—those who benefit more from the imbalance of a capitalistic society should be required to give more back.

During the past decade, even as extreme weather became perversely more extreme, and the rich richer and the middle class nearly extinct, for a long time the call for change still never sounded all that compelling. Often I found myself writing short stories instead of letters to Congress, reminding myself that characters reveal themselves through action even while I refused to act. I joined in here and there. Marching in NY and DC against the war. Campaigning for Kerry and Obama. But it all seemed muted, as the digital revolution, technological innovations and social media webs continued to take over the landscape like Kudzu plants, ravaging everything in their path, even as they often served merely to highlight the trivial. It was all giant and tangled, huge and global and endless, sucking us and trampling right over us, hitting us from every direction. More powerful than a call for change, day to day, was that obliterating urgency of now that swallowed up the present moment—What’s happening? What just happened? Like Thoreau waking up from his nap: Has anything changed in the past hour? What’s next? What’s new? Keep me updated! Have I missed anything at all? (Other than my own life.)

For the first time I’m grateful for what social media can do, Facebook, Youtube – even Twitter–these democratic platforms for virtual assembly, connection, and open discussion not filtered through the so-called liberal media (And that, my friends, is the most impressive smoke and mirrors show of all. Remember the last line in The Usual Suspects about the Devil's greatest trick? To me, the greatest trick the Republicans ever played was convincing people the media was left-wing.) So that brings us to the urgency and necessity of places like blogs and social networks to let people actually speak. Finally, Marshall McCluhan’s vision of a “global village” realized in a newly occupied world.

The shots are being heard 'round the world now, and not just the world as in Manhattan. I've been down to Zuccotti Park a few times, started donating, fundraising and writing letters. I am hoping the groundswell will suck us in. The voices are loud now--the "we the people" corporations went too far, finally, like Icarus-- so many Americans are joining in for the first time. Mine wasn't among them, but those true dissenting voices were there all along (see The Nation, again, Moveon, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, Howard Zinn, Mother Jones, among others). If you believe it, you’ll see it, and I suppose hear it too.

So what am I trying to say? Occupiers in Zuccotti Park, Oakland, and Denver – I hear you. I’m with you. In Taiwain, Hong Kong, Australia, Rome, Athens, Flint, Michigan, and Fairbanks, Alaska, your message is not lost on us. Midnight riders, passing information back and forth at speeds so fast they compete only with the speed of light, I’m with you in Rockland, where you must feel very strange.

I am tied to my computer of late, that machine of conflicted obsession, checking for updates. Remember the archaic game King’s Dominion? It would be insufferable to play that game now. But what made it interesting then? The active role the player played, the decisions he or she made. Which arrow to press? What door to open? How big a risk to take? We have those choices now, for real, in the relentless interactive interface of our cyborg lives. We're on the sea-journey now on the highway across America, with the chance--given to us by brave protesters willing to face down police, pouring rain, ridicule, and many sleepless nights--to show that we still believe in the common good. Character will be revealed through action. Even though new parents like me have maybe just finally started sleeping through the night again, I hope we heed MLK’s advice to our parents' generation and don’t let ourselves sleep through this revolution.

"I'm with you in Rockland/where you must feel very strange"

and "I'm with you in Rockland/in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night"

both from Howl, Ginsberg

The rich owe society for the benefits they receive

2011-10-26T15:24:00.006-04:00

I'll explain this in the next post.

The rich owe society for the benefits they receive

The conclusion is simple and yet lost on Buckley—those who benefit more from the imbalance of a capitalistic society should be required to give more back.

Attack on wealthy shows ignorance of economics

In her letter to the Globe (“The rich owe society for the benefits they receive,” March 6), Rachel Federman of Acton asserts that wealthy individuals acquire their wealth at the expense of the poor. This could not be further from the truth.

In market transactions, consumers willingly give up their dollars for things of value. Individuals acquire those dollars by providing things of value (e.g., higher-quality goods and services at lower prices). Consequently, wealth is achieved by making other people happy.

Ignorance of basic economics and prejudice against money-making have been the source of many disastrous policies. Envy is a seductive but ultimately self-destructive vice.

Jeff Milyo, Concord

Naïve view of economics ignores market coercion

Jeff Milyo’s assertion in his March 12 letter that wealth is amassed only through the happy provision of desirable goods to discriminating customers is painfully naïve. It completely sidesteps the question of how those of us with nothing to trade must nonetheless pay to live.

It is furthermore not evident that persons who amass wealth by speculative buying and selling of commodities contribute to public happiness. The price of real estate, for instance, has been escalated beyond the reach of most Americans in the last 20 years not by increasing quality (to the contrary) but by speculative resellers. A few people have in this way become very wealthy by making many other people unhappy, i.e. homeless.

Milyo also denies the possibility of extortion. It is hard to describe the exchange of sweatshop labor for pennies a day as either voluntary or happy, except for the sweatshop owner. This implicit threat of destitution exists for many workers (who “should be happy to have a job”) throughout the modern world.

Jonathan Clapp, Pelham

Life on Land (Part II)

2011-09-12T13:43:00.209-04:00

June 15

Where to begin? Maybe like tributaries, gathering water from myriad sources and bringing them into a coherent line of thought. I’ll give it a shot. On July 11 last year I said there was a huge piece I left out of the story I was trying to tell about my chaotic days with Wally. That was the part about how—nevermind his sensory stuff and the ever-changing therapy schedules and the freelance work I couldn’t cram into naptimes—the real reason things were so complicated is because I made them that way.

By now it’s clear that, like the Zen we bring to the mountaintop, we create “last American childhood” moments more than we happen upon them. Yes it’s true that here in Manhattan there are the rumbling subways, the thronging crowds, the sound of sirens, the overwhelming number of outdoor concerts, water parks, free art activities—the daily “You absolutely can’t miss this” events (“Yes I can, and I will”). It’s dizzying, it’s exhausting, and there are always jackhammers.

But you can still live a kind of small town country life here, with farmer’s markets, playgrounds across the street, baskets full of fresh mint and cilantro, sidewalk chalk drawings, late summer picnics, kids playing barefoot outside after dark, river walks, even stargazing now on The Highline. You have to be more vigilant in some ways to live that kind of life. More on guard, and I was never good at that. I wanted to yes to all possible plans and reveries, to expand time, to believe that a refusal to accept the laws of space and time meant they could actually be disobeyed. That we could slip into the world of Dali’s broken and melted clocks, a persistence of fantasy that would protect us against the persistence of memory and inevitable decay. It’s a kind of paradox that by trying to defy the laws of space and time, that’s exactly what you lose: space and time, the things you want the most.

The city is the best place to live when you’re young, going to see bands, meeting friends, making yourself dizzy and tangled up on purpose and having no responsibility to anyone to wake up untangled, or to wake up at all. But once I had Wally, I was always daydreaming about a house in the country or by the sea. I wondered if it was fair to raise him here, if he could have enough of those experiences in nature that had been such an important part of my childhood. I finally decide that, if given the choice between those two proto-crypto dreams houses that kept calling out to me moments before sleep, I would choose the one by the sea.

June 22

This morning Wally and I found a tiny brown shell in the yard next to our apartment. We puzzled over its appearance and traced its shape on a piece of notebook paper.

"How did it get here?" we asked. A seashell could have fallen out of the mouth of one of the seagulls that pass overhead every morning, just after sunrise.

Decide on the sea and it comes to you.

More and more I experience a version of the Anaïs Nin quote turned on its head. “We see things as we are” is helpful to remember when interpreting others’ behavior or disturbing situations, to remember we're seeing everything through the lens of our own history, but there is the inverse too, that we have the power to see things in a certain way (though I'm not an advocate for visualization about the future, per se, or at least it's not something I have spent much time examining). What we imagine to be true is more true than any other version of reality. My dad loves to say, “I’ll see it when I believe it” a verbal twist but complete revision of the cliché “I’ll believe it when I see it”, the latter being essentially a decorous version of “Show me the money”. My dad’s version overlaps with the Anaïs Nin line. When you believe it, you'll be able to see it. Just the same way kids tend to live up (or down) to the expectations you have of them. Or the way the faithful find signs of God everywhere and the faithless, constant irrevocable proof that we are alone. What you believe is what you'll see.

That Chelsea morning began with a question: How did this end up here? We were talking about the shell. (And that morning too, I noticed for the first time, that the bathroom here is covered with seashell wallpaper.) But the question extended out to the three of us: Alex, Wally and me. My grandmother always blamed her brother-in-law Hi for her decision to stay in this apartment rather than buy one across town in a nicer building (with a doorman!) where her sisters lived. That rotten Uncle Hi--if only he'd minded his own business, everyone would have been so much better off. But if Miriam had bought that apartment, when she died my dad and aunt would have sold it. Because she stayed renting here for over forty years, it was passed on to me. Still we don't have Hi to thank for living here. My grandmother was the one who decided, day after day, to take his advice. Why was so persuaded by someone else, someone she rarely talked about in any other capacity? Or if not that, why so unwilling to admit to her own agency in that decision?

While we examined the shell, a bee circled above us. Wally was amused and wanted to go hunting for more bumblebees. Having little luck he moved on to a search for roly-poly bugs. You have to really slow down and get down low to the ground to see them, if there are even any around. Some days we find them; some days they're as elusive as Annie Dillard's muskrats in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She stalks the muskrats for entire days just to catch a glimpse. "Can I stay still? How still? It is astonishing how many cannot, or will not, hold still. I could not, or would not, hold still for thirty minutes inside, but at the creek I slow down, center down, empty."

When Wally and I "slow down, center down, empty" we find petals, furry seeds, beautiful new green acorns--lots of confirmation that, even in a metropolis, we’re surrounded by nature. I feel comforted by that. But a few hours later, nature starts to intrude.

After I put Wally down for a nap I noticed there were five horrendous giant black flies on the screened-in porch, as if something had hatched out there. Do flies hatch in groups? I mentioned it to Alex over the phone. He told me to call maintenance.

"Isn’t that a little extreme?" I said, "Even for city folk?" He’d thought I’d said “Flags”. He was picturing five giant black flags had fallen from the porch above us. No silly, just five stupid flies. They’re gone now.

Then at lunch, a tiny, almost transparent white spider appeared in a bowl of grapes. When it caught my eye I nearly shrieked. Shrieked? At a translucent white spider? And you claim you want to hike alone barefoot in the White Mountains! You daydream about spending a year with no electricity in a cabin near Walden Pond! (For those of you who don’t know me, I have never actually claimed the desire to do either of those things, but you know, country mouse fantasies, etc.)

In the afternoon as soon as Alex got home I planned head to an "idealist" career fair uptown. I was dressed as professionally as I can manage to look these days. Dinner was ready on the stove. I even had Wally’s pajamas set out on the bed. Atypically I had everything pretty much in order. Wally was back in the bedroom playing “matching” with Alex. He wasn’t hanging on me, or getting in my way, yet I could not seem to get myself out the door.

The brochure for the job fair had said to make sure you have informed questions. I didn’t have any. I’d like to help people, the planet. I can’t say I’m up for anything, anymore, if I ever was. Up for anything lands you on street corners engaged in inappropriate 3 am conversations. Up for anything sends you to an internship for Senator Kerry, to pouring espresso and sweeping muffin crumbs because the internship is unpaid, to Brides’ magazine luncheons, to Martin Scorcese’s Bringing Back the Dead premiere opening, behind strip malls with shady characters. Up for anything lands you under rooftop water towers, demoted from jobs, to warehouse startups, to creepy walkups, to seedy open mic nights, to small port towns where windshields crack, wandering back alleys of deserted Brooklyn neighborhoods in winter, to leading a class full of 8th graders to MTV in Times Square at rush hour on the subway and returning to school with only four of them, to playing music in a desolate scrap-metal neighborhood full of sea merchant ghosts. At 35 years old, “up for anything” is not only vague, it's not acceptable. It will take you a long way out of your way, which clearly you’ve already gone.

I was also worried about being the oldest person at the fair by about 13 years or so. How have I never been to grad school? I am so the prototype of someone who would rather go on asking questions than answering them. Someone who should have continued on the path of least resistance, ignored the advice about not ending up in Oklahoma with an adjunct position and no health care. Instead I heeded that advice, like Miriam heeded Uncle Hi’s advice not to move. Both of us claiming "No, I didn't want to stay", yet each day choosing to do just that.

July 5 "Living by Fiction"

In the last post, which was really just an introduction to this one, I quoted Annie Dillard about the way we spend our days is how we spend our life. I quoted her for years, somewhat ludicrously, having until recently only ever read her slim volume Living by Fiction.

I am living by fiction now, one of my own making. A fiction that says at 35 I can still be up for anything. That Wally can jump into the fountain at Columbus Circle (he does) and run barefoot next to the river (he does that too) and be a Huck Finn in the city, minus the abusive, alcoholic dad and general mayhem. I can continue the fiction of thinking I’d prefer to live out in nature when all day I feel infested by translucent spiders and hatching black flies. The fiction that says I live in a small town. But this part is true: whatever neighborhood playground I venture into, I find Wally’s friends now. I can talk to their parents while the kids scamper off, which is one of the best possible thing kids can do. It should be a rule or something. Scamper off at least once a day. (If only we could say “Come back after dark” but that’s likely a ways off, given that I’m not actually delusional* (so far as I know) and we don’t actually live in a small town.)

Here in this neighborhood my grandmother and now I kept dreaming of leaving, I have that ever-elusive family “group” so absent last year. There is a sense of community. Going outside to see who is around without having to plan ahead of time. Nights together with wine in the park. Picnics on Fridays. Circling to each others’ houses. I don’t have to mingle anymore. I don’t have to keep orienting myself, introducing myself, giving some ludicrous elevator pitch of who I am to someone I just met and will likely never see again.

September 8

I’d like to go on like Annie Dillard says, not being a scientist, but exploring the neighborhood. I’d like to be like the pilgrim at Hudson River, exploring constantly, chasing around the rushing, thronging, pushing, horrifying, glittering mess of things here in the city like she did at the creek. From Pilgrim: “I stake the time I’m grateful to have, the energies I’m glad to direct. I risk getting stuck on the board, so to speak, unable to move in any direction, which happens enough, God knows; and I risk the searing, exhausting nightmares that plunder rest and force me face down all night long in some muddy ditch seething with hatching insects and crustaceans.”

I may not have the stomach for real ditches and hatching insects like she does, so maybe instead I can be a city version of a muskrat stalker, chasing life in all its elusive and maddening cosmopolitan forms. It’s getting dark outside now and there is this mysterious gypsy jazz band playing in our yard. Really, they're there. This is strange. I can't see them. Alex isn’t home and Wally's nearly sleeping so I can't go down. They’re hiding behind the trees. Another mystery.

As a pilgrim you have to know where you are headed, don't you? To what holy place. Not just back alleys, warehouse startups, seedy bars, water tower rooftops. But all those things I listed when reviewing my history for the job fair...the same events over the past 13 years could be made to sound far less adventurous, in fact completely mundane. I lived with my parents for one year after college and then New York the rest of them time. I've been an editor and done some work for nonprofits. I had a band then I had a baby. The effect is so radically different, depending on how you tell the story. But that is precisely what matters, how you tell the story, to yourself, the one you are living right now. "The universe is made of stories, not atoms."**

September 12 "Loomings"

It isn’t strange that many of us want to live near water. It’s so primal, a natural inclination. It isn’t all that many years ago that one creature came out of the water and decided to stay on dry land, maybe all the while blaming some kind of rare crustacean for the foolish decision. (Did you know roly-polys are the only crustacean that lives on land?) Yes New York is one of the most overwhelming places to raise a child, but it’s also a tiny island. As Melville writes in the opening of Moby Dick, here in the city of Manhattan, "Right and left, the streets take you waterward." Even now, the river is rushing along, just a few blocks away. The street outside our apartment door takes us waterward. No wonder seagulls fly overhead. I sometimes forget that.

There is a line from a poem that haunts me. I don’t remember where it’s from. I wish I could find it. “You live like you have a death sentence. And you do.” It appeals to me; I’ve never been good at the denial of death. But today I am changing it to: “You act like you live near the ocean. And you do.” In certain moments I channel Ishmael, in that opening chapter of Moby Dick so perfectly called "Loomings". "I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."

The sea is right here. There's an express train that will let us off a block from Brighton Beach, to the boardwalk, to waves and sand castles, to the piers and even Coney Island with that parachute drop that somehow remains. The sea is right here. You do live by the sea. What you believe, you'll see. He doesn't know it yet, but Wally and I are headed straight to it after I pick him up from school today.

Brighton Beach, September 12

*Though I suppose truly delusional people wouldn’t categorize themselves that way.
**Muriel Rukeyser

September 11, 2011

2011-09-11T22:07:00.000-04:00

Today I went with my friend Kristin to visit St. Paul’s Chapel across from the World Trade Center site. They had candles and incense. A woman played Mendelsohn on the piano. Kristin and I remembered watching the towers burn from our rooftop in Brooklyn. We wrote messages on white ribbons that had been marked by the church with these words “Remember to Love”. We tied them to trees in the graveyard. From there you can see Ground Zero where the families who lost loved ones gathered today. We hoped they were able to find some small measure of peace.

Life on Land (Part I)

2011-09-10T15:57:00.010-04:00

“I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood.” Annie Dillard

The Highline, 27th Street

I wanted to start where I am, but even that sounds wrong—should it be where I "was"? So then, how about both present tense. I want to start where I am. But I can't even do that. Heisenberg Principle: behavior changes under observation.

I am falling away from my blog, but only in practice, not in theory. (Yogi Berra “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”) Certain themes have emerged. The idea of how much control we have over our lives, a lot more than we want to admit. Realizing now that more than anything for me having an overpacked schedule is resistance to bigger life goals and life questions. Ignoring big life questions is not a problem I face, but making them so huge that they’re unanswerable and irrelevant is something I do on an hourly basis. (The problem of the earth being engulfed by the sun and vaporized into it, for example—this will happen, ask any physicist, but not for a while.) Start with small things. Start with—What did you do today? A blog is so accessible that way. That's the only question you're being asked to answer. And it's a huge one. For almost a decade now I've been hounded by an Annie Dillard line: "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives". What did you do today? It's an essential question. Put them all together and that's how you spent your life.

 When a friend asked me that on the playground recently he answered his own question, following up with, “Same thing as yesterday, same as tomorrow.” But the truth is, that’s how I want it to be, how I dream of it being. A sameness, a rhythm, a flowing tide coming in and then receding. Instead it just keeps changing. Here’s Annie Dillard again, this time from American Childhood, a book I felt compelled to read given the name of my blog: “Scenes drift across the screen from nowhere. ..These aren’t still shots. The camera is always moving. And the scene is always just slipping out of sight.”

I tried to capture some of those scenes from the moving camera last year on these virtual pages. Why write about playground dynamics? Why even sensory and sensibility stuff? Why the empty garden? The family reunion? The west village library? The seven days of mice? The pink trees? The Boy Choy? The time capsule? The slow, painful runs, the changing friendships, the hope for a return to Gowanus, taking things apart and carrying them away? Dillard answers, this time in Pilgrim on Tinker Creek, a far superior book to American Childhood in my opinion. “The first question—the crucial one—of the creation of the universe and the existence of something as a sign and an affront to nothing, is a blank one. I can’t think about it. So it is to the fringe of that question that I affix my attention, the fringe of the fish’s fin, the intricacy of the world’s spotted and speckled detail.”

So we start very tiny. An hour in the park. A slight betrayal. An awkward conversation. A moment of forgiveness that we maybe did not deserve. And see what we can dig into, pull up or apart, expand upon, extrapolate, make meaning from, find a theme, a point, a glimmer, a hint.

My struggle over the past year—to pull away from others’ opinions and advice and to recognize my own shadow in those I imagine to be hounding me—has been undertaken largely because of the desire to document my time with Wally.

It’s been about a year since I started writing on a sort of steady basis. It’s natural to use a year as a marker, a measuring device, to ask: Where was I last year at this time? How are things different now? Are they what I expected them to be? Last spring, when I began these chronicles, I was writing about the despair of playground mingling, the bleakness of what my friend Hein called “the zombie mom scene”. I was beginning to read about sensory processing disorder, getting used to Wally’s therapy schedule, trying to reign in my frantic days, change my expectations, bring my life more in line with my priorities. I was flooded with unwritten years of my own life, Thoreau's unexamined years, questions about how I ended up where I ended up. (There's a great quote in Little Children about how adulthood is basically an accumulation of weak moments.) My days were all over the place.

I was beginning to get past the myths of my own childhood, culminating just recently the post about changing interpretations of utopian childhoods. When trying to answer what did I mean by last American childhood, it became apparent that our generation may have lived not only the last but one of the first. I don’t trust people looking backward or forward. I wouldn’t trust myself, had I not recorded it here, to reflect back accurately on "what did I do" each day of last year. And this is part of the resistance to writing too. The desire to maintain an artifice, a history continually revised in the retelling. But writing requires observation. And there’s that Heisenberg principle at work. Writing forces you to see more clearly. Reading back over past writing, even more so. When you write honestly, you’re almost forced to decide whether to make a change or not.

Plans and Reveries

2011-08-30T22:43:00.021-04:00

Strange to come across this photo by chance today...searching furiously for one of Wally and his OT from when he started with her...in February '10. He has his last session tomorrow.

Of all the people I've ever been in bands with I think only Alex is still playing music. Oh yeah--Ivan too has been writing songs and recording them. They're really good. Even when I'm awake. The first Joe would be if he hadn't died. In fact one of the reasons he died, his parents told us, was he kept putting off surgery in the fear that he wouldn't be able to play guitar after he had it.

Everyone's on the career track now. Or the mid-30s last hurrah. Or the family track. You know how that's always said with such distaste—they’re on the family track, i.e., they’re into themselves now, or at least not into: career, rock music, hanging out with friends, staying out late drinking too much? Joe from Bayonne's drums are still in Gowanus. Last night I started playing music again.

This photo looks like a still for a movie that we never ended up making. Or maybe we did, just separately. My dad took it on the roof where my sister used to live in Brooklyn just a few days before—or after?—our CBGBs gig. It closed that October; five years ago. Yet another place we’ll point to and try to get young people born after it was gone to get excited about. Can you believe that's where CBGBs used to be? And they’ll say, “What’s CBGBs?”

***

When the story ends, you die, and not the other way around.

Worship is the clearest sign of mass deficiencies in a relationship.

Hemingway rewrote the ending to A FareWell to Arms 39 times.

All those million dreams, big and little, if they hold you back from accomplishing some other, more important dream, they’re not serving your life purpose anymore.

Worrying about other people is just resistance. Worrying what they’ll think about you, or how much they irritate you, or feeling you need to convince them of anything at all--is just resistance. Paying attention to the news too much, to what you should be buying, cooking, consuming, wearing, doing, to how others could be happier, sleep better, stop drinking so much coffee, it's all resistance.

Recently Alex said, "Have you noticed magnets don't repel each other lately?"

The question when it comes to clutter is not -- Do I want this? or Could I one day use this? or Do I like this in isolation? These questions can't be asked on a case by case basis. One by one, every book is valuable, every chachka could look kind of nice perched by itself on the window sill, maybe every shirt could one day be worn. The question has to be posed to the aggregate -- Do I want to live like this? If yes, don't change. If no, start getting rid of, even indiscriminately. Don't you want to be free? To "Write while you have the light"? Plus, someone else might be able to use it.

Did you ever notice how the people who are the most confident about what they say and how they live their lives are usually the most intolerable to be around? Like anyone who has it "all figured out" and is always giving others advice on how to sleep better or work harder or fix their relationship usually has this horrendous, unbearable forcefield of miserable energy circling around them?

The beginning of the end is when you start caring about having a comfortable bed and you can't really stomach $4 bottles of wine.

The fun of it is you and the woods, the descending sun, the smell of the pine trees, the unexpected daffodil that’s somehow still alive. It’s not what your parents or boyfriend or boss or bass player or friends think about each thing you find, it’s what you think and feel, or don’t feel, remember or try desperately to block out. It’s the experience of being out there and the alarming things you find and the moments that inspire and the dirty, creepy stuff too: the whiskey bottles, an old mattress, a ripped up photo of a pretty blond girl with bangs and a heart-shaped locket. You’ll come back inside to feel safe, to create a life, but you go out and gather pumpkins and wildflowers, you don’t seek those things from your relationship or your family or your friends, you get those things on your own, or with interactions from outside people, and you bring home the things that transport themselves, and you tell stories about the wolf you think you might have caught a glimpse of and the church bells you heard from the other side of the lake. But the point wasn’t in the stories you tell or the wildflowers and precious stones and sea glass you bring home and collect in a blue jar. It was in the experience itself, the cracking of fallen sticks, the sun still trying so hard, even in late December, even on the shortest, darkest, loneliest day of the year, to peer down through the giant looming pine trees and reach you.

How much failure are you willing to accept?

In the band you either had your own gig coming up or somebody else’s. You were drinking all the time. There was always this charged energy, this sense of purpose; wherever you were at any given moment was where you were supposed to be.

In the end though, if you can’t bring yourself to do it (I’m telling myself this) then you don’t really want it that badly. Those 10,000 reasons you tell yourself for why you didn’t do it--you feel bad hearing the baby cry, feel like you should have a nice dinner with your family, feel like you're being rude to your friend Magali, feel bad not going to the holiday party, should make your holiday charitable donations, all this paperwork and people keep calling. Who are you trying to convince? Who are you asking permission from? Who are you laying out the explanation for – see this is why I didn’t play music or write or follow through on that impossible dream. Meanwhile the sea level rises. You can’t argue with endangered orangutans.

But you’re not asking me, are you? (You don’t know me, and I haven’t published anything but a few bargain basement impulse buys.) You’re not asking your favorite writers like William Faulkner or Katherine Mansfield or Anne Tyler. You’re not asking those 30-something Jewish writers from Brooklyn that keep pouring our brilliant novel after brilliant novel, obnoxiously so. You’re not asking your 7^th grade English teacher. You’re not asking your wife, you’re not asking your children, you’re not asking your boss, you’re not asking your therapist. You’re not even asking God. You’re asking yourself – is this okay? Is it okay that I did not write? That I didn't play music? That I gave up ballet? That I never paint anymore? It is, isn’t it? Do you understand why? Do you see how much I was up against? I didn't stand a chance at all, did I?

Ask yourself if the most important part being out there in the gauzy light that still makes its way down through the skeleton trees, hearing your own breath. Or is it to return and tell others about it? It's the end of summer--why are you imagining winter? Is it to be there again? To find out what it meant? To set out for Ithaca, to hear a four-count rhythm, to find a green light, to hunt a white whale? Is it to feel the jagged stone in your pocket and know that tomorrow you’ll be out there again?

The windows are lit up. Your friends are back inside, they're getting set to watch From Here to Eternity. It's cozy and they're making popcorn. They warned you not to go out into that ungentle December night. Partly they were worried for you and partly they just wanted your company, but mostly they wanted things to stay the same. Tell them they can dream their infinity dreams, but you only have a little bit of time.

Title: Black Gold

Eventually the oceans will evaporate into space

2011-08-27T21:27:00.003-04:00

Wally stopping to smell the flowers along the river today, ones that didn't have much of a smell, and will likely be gone by tomorrow.

The Cathedral Space of Childhood

2011-07-11T14:16:00.026-04:00

A while ago -- three months! -- I wrote "When there's something you can't write, there's usually a reason why you can't write it." And then I went on to try to explain what I meant--still not writing about "it" -- and got lost in the whole life-as-film reel/cyborg post about the Jesse Eisenberg run-in. And it's still out there, something I want to write but can't. I didn’t think it was a loaded topic. Not an example of what May Sarton describes in Journal of a Solitude when she says, "…at some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth.” It's simply a post about the street where my mom grew up that I began writing in February, when Wally and I were in Massachusetts visiting my parents.

I had time that end-of-winter trip to pause in front of the woods where my parents live now, to remember the ones from my own childhood and contemplate briefly the tendency to hold onto memories of an idyllic past, string them together like rosary beads, turn them into a kind of devotional. Like fiction, the memories are emotionally true if not empirically so, subject to a mysterious process of transfiguration that attempts to recreate how something felt, not what it was. It is a constant, hounding specter, that cathedral space of childhood, open to endless visions and revisions.*

All in all the topic felt bigger, and led me to the misrepresentation of American childhood in general and to Steven Mintz’s attempt to see past the myths with his exhaustive account of its various epochs in: Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood, which I only finally read a few weeks ago.

I was interrupted writing that post about my mother’s childhood street, then we returned to New York and the preschool search and the abandoned winter playgrounds. What I had written that February day in Massachusetts fell out of sync with the day-to-day rhythm of a blog with its essential vow: this is what is happening in my life, now. So I left it behind. But it nags at me, and before I can get to what I want to say about what’s happening now, I have to first explain what happened then.

This is what I had started to write on one of the last days there while Wally was sleeping.

February

Until last year I'd never visited the house where my mother grew up, but the name Buddington Road circulated around the blurry edges of the woods of my own childhood, like Citizen Kane’s rosebud, a kind of benchmark of what growing up should be. Up a hill from the little manufacturing river town of Derby, Connecticut my mom and her siblings lived in “the sticks” where once in a while cows poked their heads down the road a bit and only one other house was visible from their property, even then only in the winter, when the trees were bare.

Based on the stories my mom and her siblings told us, Buddington Road meant children free to wander, to climb inside fallen trees, gather leaves, wade in swamps, make forts, dig up treasures, hide inside Concord Grape vines, pick apples, peaches, and cherries and happily eat them with abandon. An all-American childhood if ever I heard one. Even little Billy, the youngest, at Wally’s age now, happily bobbed around unsupervised at the edge of the woods while the older three kids disappeared for hours at a stretch, as long as he stayed where he could be heard yelling back when they called his name.

When I drove past the house with my aunt last spring I was amazed at just how much land there had actually been and how imposing the woods still appeared. One never knows how much to trust the Mercator projections of childhood geography.

The current owners let us inside the house, which had been added onto in ramshackle ways. I stared out the back porch into the backyard. I could easily picture my mom, aunts and uncle hanging from tire swings, picking raspberries and chasing each other through the trees with red-stained hands.

By the time my sister and I were born my grandparents had moved to a bigger house with smaller woods and finally retired into what had been their summer place; “the cottage”, a little red house near the beach. That house was Riordan-family central, so for me, family holidays and folklore naturally centered on the sea. Our Christmases blended together in those years with verses from a Child’s Christmas in Wales (close enough) always on a shelf that I could reach. But for my mom and her siblings the defining feature of their personal mythology had been the woods of Buddington Road. And the rest of us believed what they told us about the close and holy darkness that they found in that wilderness cathedral.

It was in the sun-drenched kitchen of the cottage a few Christmases ago when the Buddington Road utopia began to unravel. My mother’s voice rose above the usual intersecting conversations, leading the kids in a chorus of “Jack Miller, the killer must be found.” It’s a chant from an old Western. As a child, she’d gone around the neighborhood hollering it when a killer was on the loose there. He was never found. A killer on the loose? That doesn’t sound like what we pictured. Buddington Road morphed into Wisteria Lane as stories poured out about suicides, jilted lovers, strange hunched-over neighbors in dark kitchens who never ventured outside, a house a father built for his son as a wedding present that was never lived in and slowly collapsed beside the main house into a dilapidated testament to lost dreams.

Those of us who hadn’t grown up there exaggerated its dark side, conjured up spooky voices to intone “The Horrors of Buddington Road”, making fun of the deceptive way the stories about it had always left out its David Lynch underbelly. Not that you can’t miss a place that isn’t perfect. And not that terrible things don’t happen everywhere. Perhaps it is even to my mom's and her siblings' credit that they focused on the good things. Yet I wondered, still, about the way we look back, both to our own childhoods and to some now out-of-reach (invented?) ideal of an authentically American one.

As my aunt and I drove away from the house last year she reminisced about how much better things had been then, how much safer, how no one ever worried then about strangers (even killers on the loose) or about having to lock your door.

But

…there was the Cold War. The Korean War. The atomic bomb. Corporeal punishment in school. Weren’t there air raids? Polio outbreaks? The McCarthy witch hunts? Wasn’t there segregation and civil unrest? Better for whom? Safer for whom? Surely not for Japanese, Jews, blacks, gays, housewives drowning in vodka and valium, children living in poverty. Better for some people, yes. Which brings me to Steven Mintz’s book, to 400 exhaustive pages documenting the hardships children have always suffered in this country. There was, he says, in the middle of the last century, a time when enough progress had been made to grant children freedom from adult labor and more protection, which converged with peacetime, and the possibility of supporting a family on a single income, to create the arrival of the middle-class childhood. Yet toward the end of the book Mintz touches on the fact that we’ve now gone so far in removing children from the adult world that we’ve turned childhood into a “project” for adults. Hoping to protect children from being subsumed too quickly into the adult world of work, we’ve “created the polar opposite of the ideal embodied by Twain’s novel” which was childhood for its own sake, not “merely as preparation for adulthood.” The challenges facing children today are not the focus of his book. He skims over the achievement obsession, helicopter parenting, kids-getting-older-younger (in fashion and awareness), and marketing to children as an enormous part of the consumer base, hoping we can create alternative paths for development. His aim is primarily to debunk myths of an idealized past while highlighting the persistence of a certain kind of freedom lacking today. In his final line he admits to the ghastly truth of Huck Finn’s own existence, while emphasizing the one thing Huck had that children today largely miss out on: adventure.

“Huck Finn was an abused child, whose father, the town drunk, beat him for going to school and learning to read. Who would envy Huck’s battered childhood? Yet he enjoyed something too many children are denied and which adults can provide: opportunities to undertake odysseys of self-discovery outside the goal-driven, over-structured realities of contemporary childhood.”

Then Wally woke up.

April

I had planned to take him to a nearby indoor play space in the afternoon. First I had to make a quick stop at the post office. As we walked back to the car the sun came out for just a second—the first and only glimpse of it that day. Yet it seemed so inviting. Maybe there will be sun. We should play outside.

So we drove instead to the nearest playground, but as we pulled up Wally remembered the train station was nearby and demanded to go “look some trains”. The sun had not reappeared and it didn’t matter one way or the other to me so I drove to the train station and walked around, lucky enough to see two that day, one in each direction.

Enough trainspotting. Too late, then, for the play space, too dark for the playground. Next plan—bring Wally to a library that was open late in a neighboring town, about a fifteen-minute drive from where we were.

Meanwhile in the background all day was the slight anxiety of phone tag from the director of admissions at one of the preschools I was hoping to be able to tour. When I started calling these schools in the winter after we met with the Board of Ed many said it was too late to apply, that they’d call if a spot on the waiting list opened up. I had already missed a call that day from this woman—and you just don’t do that with these kinds of calls — so I had my phone there at the ready, in the car on the way to the library. And of course the phone rang as I was driving. It was her. I swerved to pull the car over and picked up. Just by chance I pulled into the street where my parents live.

So I had the slightly anxious conversation in their neighborhood, with Wally in the back now demanding to see Mimi (my mom) because we were just a few houses away. Trains and Mimi. His two favorite things. You can’t be within a stones throw of either one and not say hi. I had wanted to give my mom a little more of a break, to bring Wally home a little more worn out before dinner, but I myself was too worn out to keep pushing and schlepping, this time against his will. So we pulled into their driveway. Mimi was cheerful in the kitchen window and totally fine with us being back earlier than expected.

She took Wally outside to feed the birds. I could see them from the basement window, scattering birdseed like confetti, my mom’s white coat blending in with the remaining snow. Wally was a little blue elf beside her, skipping around. Periodically he’d put one foot out over a little stream, looking back and waiting to be told, “Be careful”. It’s the same thing he does when he’s standing on high places, one foot over the edge, laughing. “Be careful”. He’ll say it if no one else does. This is progress. Now it’s usually done for show.

July 7, 2011

Up until recently these little outdoor scenes couldn’t happen. Wally would just drive my mom crazy by tugging at other people’s car doors or running into their gardens or pulling at stakes in the ground. It was like taking a cat for a walk without a leash. Hopeless. Now here they were side by side. It’s a new thing to see. My mom can watch Wally, without simply watching him run off. She can show him a cardinal, take him over to see the crocuses that have already popped up. She’s at home in the woods and Wally is too; children are naturalists by nature.

I decided to take the chance then to run, now that I could actually leave him with her. I shot in the opposite direction, around to the Arbor Glen path. It was a perfect cold that day, the kind that might bother you when you don’t have enough layers on but as soon as you face it you start to defy it, rise above it. I ran past the fields and the stonewall, up toward the outer edge of the apple farm, out to the street then back to the edge of the woods, down a stretch from where my mom and Wally had been playing. I didn’t see them. They must have already gone inside. I felt alone in that wonderful way that the woods allow you to feel, alone but surrounded, listening to the wind in trees like vespers in that last blue stained-glass light of a winter evening.

I like the silent connection I feel after each run to my physics professor friend, the one training in Chicago for the half marathon we’ll run together in the fall in Vermont. The next day Heather and her two boys were coming to visit. The older one, as Heather points out, is nearly the age we were when we met in first grade. The world felt connected, like someone had carefully joined the dots on a dot-to-dot drawing, those friendships from childhood had somehow persisted along with those other ineffable things we remember, Cynthia Ozick’s “permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.”

Yes—I thought, catching my breath by those woods so close to the woods Thoreau wrote about in Walden—Yes, Wally needs to spend a lot of time out in nature, near the ocean, and in the woods, listening in the near-spring to Thoreau’s “cheerful music of the tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter.”

But which woods? I asked myself, making a weary half-circle back to the house. The ones at Buddington Road where paint cans were dumped out in the swamp where my mom and her siblings played?

Those paint cans--that is what is scary, really. Not Jack Miller, not the jilted lover, the brooding neighbors, the rotting house— “I always wondered if those would come back to haunt me,” my mom said about the cans later that night. The ones someone had carelessly left, in those lovely woods—those cathedral woods; who knows what other toxins were already leaking? What thousand other resources other neighbors felt it was their right to destroy in tiny, pernicious, invisible ways?

Or to which ocean should Wally grow attached? To the one down the street from the little red house we called the cottage, where my Dad and I coughed up a lung when I was 11? Where the next day it was closed off with a skull and crossbones signs propped up just in case you didn’t get the hint that it wasn't safe to swim there? The one often full of parasites because of changing tide patterns? Damaged ecosystems? Rising sea levels? Remember slowly, nearly invisibly, the most pernicious and persistent kind of change. There is, of course, the Grand Canyon to remind us of what infinitesimal accumulated change can do. Is it true that mighty Colorado River, the one that made that canyon, no longer reaches the sea? Could Cortés have ever imagined that? I just read this in Robert J. Kennedy Jr.’s foreword to Not a Drop to Drink and I can hardly stand to believe it.

What ocean and what woods, I kept asking myself—the woods from your childhood? That you like to gaze at in memory, where you dreamed of craters and crocodiles, where you built forts and buried your cat? Where you ran along train tracks and gathered sticks and jumped in canopy leaves? But you were just steps away from Grace Company—you could see it from the trees that you climbed. That horrible barren land surrounding the nefarious company that forced the town to close two aquifers forever? It was a Superfund Sight, for Godsake, a patch of land so poisonous the Federal government put it on a National Priority List for hazardous waste. Don’t you remember there were apples in the backyard—the communal backyard, the one you shared with your neighbors—but you weren’t allowed to eat anything that grew on that land. You would have sooner put your mouth around a razor. Grace—what a twisted misuse of the word. Hail Mary, full of grace. Hail Mary’s might as well have been invented for its owners.

July 8, 2011

Clearly sacred spaces are not immune to contamination. The fairy-tale spaces of childhood are as dark and full of undercurrents as most childhood pasts. I remember walking into a lecture given by Professor Pease who later became my thesis adviser. I was just visiting and missed most of what he said, but what stayed with me was the paradox of our canonical stories of an idyllic American Childhood—those of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn—being full of violence, abuse, blood, death, slavery, dead men floating, and even murder. The fairy-tale space of childhood is as dark as the nursery rhymes and fairy tales we grow up hearing in the hours before we sleep.

Not just spiders appearing during picnics but the collapsing bridge, the falling baby, (cradle and all), the wolf that eats the grandmother, the mice tails cut off with a carving knife, that ill-fated humpty dumpty, the maid's nose snapped off by a blackbird, the ladybird whose house is on fire, the bells of St. Clement's that ring in the chopper to chop off your head, the glass coffin, the Queen who thinks she’s eating Snow White’s liver, the suicidal Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel about to be cooked, the village teeming with rats, the children who follow the pied piper and drown. In both truth and fiction, childhood for most children has always been more of a horror show than a fairy tale. Like the nature channel showing lions tearing through the necks of hyenas. Very few baby cubs frolicking together in the sun. Not to mention our real-life cathedrals. A dominant religion with a promise of everlasting life that holds up as its central the image of savior dying the most gruesome, horrible death? With its sacrament that invites worshipers to eat his body and drink his blood? Forget the Twilight saga. We are our own vampires. The shadows are everywhere.

July 11, 2011

I am thinking now about that moment at the woods, about what it's calling me to do. With children—even just one—it’s harder to stumble upon those solitary moments where past and present seem to converge and your task becomes clear.

By any intelligent measure the ones I describe were the landscapes of ideal childhoods, settings for experiences so peaceful and full of privilege less than one percent of all the humans who live or ever lived could hope to enjoy anything resembling them. City or country, days packed with activities or full of time to wander, playgrounds teeming or empty—there is little more one could ever ask for.

So it is really my duty, given that, to insist on the continued cathedral space of childhood for other children. It can be inside or out, but it has to be expansive. It can be in books or journals or real-life journeys. But it has to give what Steven Mintz says we are largely denying children today—the voyage downriver, without us. It has to offer time to dream, to wander, to explore, ask questions, to imagine.

What variables converged to give me that moment alone at the woods that day, the moment that felt so entangled it has taken me all this time to entangle it, to unravel the beauty and horrors of Buddington Road, to expose the environmental dystopia of my own utopias? It was that single sliver of sun that changed my plans from indoor play space to outdoor playground. Then being near trains—for this three year old who was “born on trains”—naturally led to trainspotting instead. Next, the odd timing of the phone call that led to the swerve into my parents’ neighborhood.

The hint of sun had been on the walk to the post office to the car. What had I been mailing anyway? A package to a friend of mine from college. I had tried twice before to send it out. Once it was returned because the packaging fell apart (so much for trying to be green—using only a paper bag instead of a padded envelope). The second time for the wrong address—the wrong state even, the one she’d lived a few years ago. In the intervening time she’d lived in another continent. You think I would have gotten that straight. Now she’s in Virginia. How do you forget that? Land of your birth. And even your father’s. But both those births—their location—were sort of by chance. No one ever lived in Virginia very long. Yet we were both born in Virginia, my mother in Georgia, my sister in California. Pieces of a narrative that point to such a different story from the truth. We were all raised, born from parents born and raised, all of us blood-tied the Northeast. It is home, in feeling and in fact. It is a great place to grow up, to return to, to try to restore. In her Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton asks, after a visit to New York, one that wears her out immeasurably: “What is essential?” She believes the source of whatever it is is in childhood. So we have to go back there, no matter how contaminated the landscape. Maybe what’s calling out to me is not only the memory but the mandate to help address that real contamination that will undermine childhood for those setting out on their adventures today. That is what I had set out from home so many years ago, to do.

*Virginia Woolf, “That great cathedral space which was childhood”

**T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, “Time for you and time for me/And time yet for a hundred indecisions/And for a hundred visions and revisions/Before the taking of a toast and tea.”

***Thoreau, Walden
****How my friend Vince describes Wally, referencing Magnetic Fields

2011-07-11T08:53:00.003-04:00

I am far from the empty garden now, fathoms away from “You didn’t have me at hello”-type posts from last summer. So much so that I keep wondering if I should erase those old blog posts, ones I no longer relate to, dashed off in haste, cringe when I think about. And yet I want the path to be clear, the markers to be obvious. There was a path I took to get here, and it wouldn't be fair to make it seem like I was here all along.

The Empty Garden

2011-06-02T09:36:00.019-04:00

Way over on East 34th street near the FDR there is a lovely secret garden that is really too secret. You would never expect to find it there, under scaffolding, inside the foreboding boundaries of the Rusk Institute. And you won't much longer, as it's set to close.

I don't know why it's not more popular. I myself have only been twice. Both times there were only a handful of children. This time it started to rain as soon as we arrived so the two kids who had been playing quickly went inside. Have most people just never heard of it? Is it the strange neighborhood? A bit too far from the subway on that cursed East side that only has one? Or could it be the idea of a therapeutic playground is something of a turn off, the air infected with sickness and disability, of fragile little boys like Colin in Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel* who must spend their lives inside, protected from daylight.

I tried to take pictures that would showcase the garden's beauty but wondered if I was being deceptive. At first glance there is definitely something sad and abandoned about the place and I don’t really know why that is. There must have been a gardener who cared a lot.** The flowers are all kept up beautifully. There’s a sandbox full of toys, a greenhouse with birds, little herb gardens, swings, a hammock. There’s a lawn with a plaque that begins: “In an urban environment with so much gray concrete, a green grassy carpet is inviting for children to climb, roll down, lie on, look at, feel and smell. . . It is cut with a hand mower with most of the clippings left to benefit the lawn. Nature prefers diversity with many types of plant life sharing a growing space.” They did everything right. It’s the kind of playground I would think those involved in Playwork—those groups like Alliance for Childhood and Play for Tomorrow who encourage imaginative, unstructured play--would celebrate. True maybe there are not enough loose parts, maybe it’s a bit too safe since it’s largely wheelchair accessible. Maybe there are too many plastic toys. But it encourages imagination. It's full of little hideaways. It's a perfect place for children to learn and explore and create their own little worlds.

And yet, both times we've gone there seemed to be a gloomy feel. Last summer on our first visit Wally flitted from one thing to another, never accepting the gardener's invitation to dream and play. He always did that though, flitted around, therapeutic garden or not. I also made the mistake of not giving us enough time:
I had to rush back to work during his nap.

Alongside the ringing sound from the wind chimes was the ticking clock of Wally's approaching nap and the increasing likelihood that he'd fall asleep in the stroller on the way home. That meant he wouldn't nap for long and I wouldn't get any work done. Last year was so full of that tug of war. Freelance work and being a stay-at-home-mom. That doesn't mean you can't do both--work and be a good mom--but at the time, getting laid off and being given full-time care for a toddler, I had not figured out how to do it. Trying to arrange the days so Wally could "climb, roll down, lie down (but only exactly when I needed him to), look at, feel and smell". In the meantime trying to keep up with my work and writing. Chase two rabbits and you won't catch either one.

I had seen the garden several times before I ever thought to bring Wally there to play. My grandmother Miriam spent a few weeks at the Rusk Institute recovering from a brain hemorrhage in the spring of 2008. Recovering is maybe the wrong word: while Wally was busy being born she was busy dying. Or maybe Dylan is right, there is no in-between. Yet she was someone who--at 93--hadn't until then spent anytime dying at all.

But on those visits she marveled at the coy fish and the parrots. She had this childlike wonder over things that a month before would never have thrilled her nearly as much as a short line at Zabars. Even into her 90s as she'd gotten more anxious, she hadn't really changed that much. For so long she had us fooled. She made us think she would not die. She refused to leave the city. Refused to stop ploughing her wagon through Herald Square. She went to the doctor to figure out "what was going on" with her legs, why they hurt. The fact that she'd been racing around on them for 93 years did not offer any insight. On her last Thanksgiving she schlepped to Massachusetts in a tiny car with a pitbull, 2 Brazilians and a pregnant lady (me). Until a few years before she would have happily taken the bus. She was never tired, even minutes before her death (and I know this only from my father--he was the only one there with her) she was not ready to go. Edna St. Vincent Millay could have spoken for her: "Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave./ I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned."

It seemed improbable to be there in the spring of 2008, with a newborn who, if he wasn't sleeping, pushed hard against anyone trying to hold him, and a grandmother who'd been so strong and now felt like porcelain. The parrots and coy fish were comforting to both of us, even if the glass garden looked out on the empty playgarden and felt a bit like a cage. Lots of people--children too--must have spent hours (days, lifetimes) in that hushed damp glass room looking out the playgarden with its mint leaves, hanging trees and red wagon. Now Mike Mulligan's steam shovel is about to tear through it. Progress stops for no one, right?. No matter how lovely a place--or a life--wrecking balls are always ready to come swinging. We'd be wise not to dodge them, I guess. But even in the garden now I had to contend with those four people inside the glass garden then--people can die, but the past is never dead.*** One of those four is gone, another is unrecognizable compared to an earlier version, as happy as can be there, not flitting around at all, but happily playing in a light spring rain.

What was the central dynamic there that transfixed me three years ago? There was my dad panicking over decisions about my grandmother's care. He was staggering, dazed, pushing around his mother turned child, accompanied by his child with her own baby, moving slowly through that greenhouse. I was guilty at the relief I felt --my grandmother was so much easier to be around, so much more peaceful, so appreciative. Or was it me--staggered and dazed at seeing my father staggering, seeing him in such a daze. Isn't that when--according to that idol of our youth, so much younger when he died than we are now--you're supposed to find God? Why couldn't Miriam find him? Why did she inherit this bloodline that left him out, that gave up on myths, on supernatural leaders, that never found him to begin with in that original garden where even then we were doomed with the threat of poisoned apples held out in such a tempting way? It would have been so much easier for her to leave and for my father to watch her go.

Back at those first visits to the glass garden she had not left yet and we were all these moving parts. Where would Miriam go? Would we live with her? Then where would Sky go? My parents too, were planning to move so she could live with them. In the end she never saw the house they bought essentially for her. We were all these loose parts, seeing things, as Anais Nin so brilliantly put, not as they are but as we are. Even the Elton John song, "Empty Garden", it's about John Lennon, but it never feels like it's about him to me. The empty garden, knocking on the door, hoping Johnny--a little boy, it has to be--will come out to play.

Of course it's obvious--the playground wasn't a gloomy place. We see things as we are. And the songs that resonate the most are about whatever you're going through at the time. Then they get seared into that moment. Maybe that moment can last forever, like Edna St. Vincent Millay's version of childhood as "the kingdom where nobody dies." No, then we'd be the stone children in that garden, frozen with silent squeals, arms forever raised in delight. Happiness turns into gloom when it's not allowed to change, when the moving parts, loose parts --that playground buzzward--loose parts of families at such loose ends, at the end--one end and one beginning--can't figure out a way to stop staring, to stop the end from coming, to stop feeling dazed by the fact that life changes--it changes, it changes, we knew that--to get in some kind of rag-tag order, to follow the leader--one you imagine still leads (can't bare to think otherwise)--and move forward.

* Secret Garden (1910)
** Elton John "Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)" (1982)
***William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun (1951), "The past is never dead, it's not even past."

Flip a Coin

2011-05-25T22:37:00.008-04:00

Everyone goes on about how having a baby is the biggest decision of your life, the biggest commitment you'll ever make and you better think really long and hard about whether or not you want to do it and be absolutely 100% sure. I don't think that's true or at least I don't think it's helpful. Having a kid does change your life to some degree, but not as much as something like The Rapture would. Since I'm a stay-at-home-mom now there is a bigger day to day change for me than for someone who spends 40+ hours away from that little reminder of how much easier life was when you weren't skidding across the living room on loose train parts. And all day long now, I do boomerang between the extreme joy and extreme fury of being a parent, the mundane and the sublime collide every hour. Yet the question of having a kid, I really don't think that is such a big deal. You can't plan it out. Of mice and men again. Or isn't there that joke about, "How do you make God laugh? Come up with a plan." Have kids or don't. Either way probably won't go the way you expect it to.

It's true having a child has impacted my relationships, my "career", my writing, my band, my travel plans, my friendships, my family life, my free time, my ability to meet people on roof tops and street corners, my drinking habits, my future plans. But still, it's not like you stand there brushing sand off your pillow at night and think--maybe this wasn't such a great idea. It just is your life at that point. And you're happy the way you were before or miserable the way you were before, except this time you clap your hands and stomp your feet when you're the former. I just thought I should maybe tell others, especially others wavering on the whether or not to have kids question, that you can treat the decision lightly. That's how it's been treated throughout most of human history. You can't trouble yourself over making the right decision. It's like where you go to college or if you go at all or if you move to New York or if you stay in rural Iowa or if you become a doctor or if you write trashy romance novels or if you fulfill your life dream to see Graceland...none of these things is really all that big a deal, day to day. You don't question and constantly wonder about having made the right choice (unless you gave away your life savings planning for a Rapture that didn't happen and someone says, "Why are you so upset? It's not the end of the world," and you say, "Exactly, that's the problem").

That crap about "You'll live with this decision for the next 18 years" is just obnoxious. It's true we don't want people having kids who aren't capable of taking care of them, but I have never seen any correlation between getting all the ducks in a row before having one and willingness to spend evenings lining plastic ducks along the edge of the bath tub on the other. If having kids is a big deal, it's because people (like me) try to carry on certain aspects of their lives as if they didn't have kids. And even then the kid-factor is simply a big deal that obscures something else that would have been the big deal of the moment. There is almost always something. Most of us can't think in front of tigers, and don't have much opportunity. Until then we'll harnass the anxiety from the fight or flight we didn't have to fight or fly from, and spread it out all over the place, to sippy cups, deadlines, bedspreads, something mildly insensitive someone we just met might have said.

Watcher of the Skies

2011-05-18T19:19:00.039-04:00

I’m at the Hudson Street library. They have the most fantastic playroom here where Wally is pretty self-sufficient now and I can actually kind of write a sentence every now and then. The librarian just told me I have The Idle Parent overdue (kind of fitting). I came across it by chance at the green library a few weeks ago and have been holding on to it to read again. It is quite possibly the single best book on childrearing I’ve ever gotten my hands on. The main message is to arrange your life so you can spend as much time with your kids as possible but to also leave them to their own devices much of the time, staying in the background, modeling happy behavior and creating an atmosphere of music and merriment. You should be nearby, enjoying life together, but not on call to meet their every need the second they make you aware of it. They need lots of time on their own or with other kids, away from store-bought toys and structured activities. Sort of a common theme these days, but the idea that lots of inventiveness and fun comes out of boredom. You have to give kids a chance to be bored so they can learn to be creative, or they’ll grow up needing constant input and drive you nuts with their demands. (The author, a rather industrious brit named Tom Hodgkinson, is also a big advocate of drinking while parenting. “Tipsy parents have happier kids” or some such. I’ll get the exact quote when I get home later and dig up that overdue book.)

I was telling the librarian how much I liked the book and he just kind of gave me a blank look. I said, "You know how everything is so structured these days with all these classes for 2-year-olds?" Meanwhile I was thinking "Isn’t great that here in the library the kids can just play and read a page or two of a book every now and then and figure out how to take turns on the slide?" He looked anxious. I found out why a few minutes later. Of course it could also be that he shudders at the thought of caregivers who sit idly by while kids color in encyclopedias and drop half-eaten lollipops into the DVD returns bin.

After I put down our backpacks Wally ran off to the fire trucks and I headed to the nature section. Just as I started to sink into that great wild Cortez-staring-at-the-Pacific* moment of being about to pour over all those wonderful books, I sensed too much activity behind me. The heavy calm air of the library was being disrupted, the barometric pressure starting to drop. Nannies and babies came streaming in tripping over rattles and sippy cups. It was the laptime brigade. Chairs were being pulled in every direction, slowly at first then with the New York frenzy of demand far exceeding a supply. A dark foreboding came over me: any minute now we’d all be touching our heads, shoulders, knees and toes an ungodly number of times.

I was right--it was a massive storytime takeover. At 3 Wally was the oldest kid in the room and there was of course no way I could get him to sit with the other participants, especially when he came in expecting to play freely. My stomach sort of dropped when the librarian started going around asking everyone’s name. Each nanny cheerfully bounced the baby in question and said, “Jacqueline” or “Taylor” or “Cole” then everyone would chime back “Hi, Cole” back in a big sing-songy voice sure to terrify the little creature who could not have expected a roomful of 60+ strangers to greet him in unison like he was at an AA meeting.

By the time the librarian got to Wally he had dashed off across the room to the play kitchen, so all was well. No question asked; no answer given. But I had to ask myself what I was even afraid of. That someone would say, “You're too old. This is for 0-18 months. Get out of here and take your choking hazard 3+ toys and snacks with you”? Or just the feeling that he is delayed so it’s almost like this is better suited for him than something for preschoolers would be? He did join in for bits and pieces of various songs. Mommies on the bus saying “Shush, shush, shush.” He gets a huge kick out of that line. "You can say “shush” all you want," I imagine him laughing deviously to himself. "No one is ever gonna hear you."

Lately I’ve noticed that Wally is often one of the oldest kids wherever we go in the morning. Plus most of the other kids are accompanied by a nanny. It is Manhattan after all. How can people afford to stay home? Although if you're paying a full-time nanny under the table and getting paid over--and the issue is only financial--couldn't you just trade places? If you wanted to, I mean. Can you afford to have a nanny if you can't afford to stay home? I don't know. Maybe. I hope this doesn't sound rude. Manhattan isn't really a mom's scene, especially for "school age" kids. I guess even in New York, even when my dad wore my yellow pajama bottoms to play pool at Westside Tavern and no one batted an eye, these days Wally and I make an odd pair. Once recently I felt so left out at the playground. It just seemed like everyone knew each other as part of some toddling playgroup and it's not like I care, usually, but it was getting to me. The mingling and the new people and the place-lessness, like you can't find anywhere to stand, or you have way too many knees and toes. Like you just started a new job and it's someone random sales guy's going-away party and anywhere you're standing is the wrong place. Plus you know that everyone who talks to you is looking around for someone more important. At that moment in the playground I was so tired from the whole scene that I just lay down on my back finally and looked up at the sky. Wally lay down beside me. It struck me as bizarre and amazing that the sky is always there for you (except on these endlessly cloudy days). That you can always just lie on your back and look up at it and it's always so peaceful and reassuring. But the weird thing too is that you're not really looking at anything, are you?

At the library this morning an entire preschool showed up on a field trip partway through the story time, and then Wally blended right in. But it shouldn’t have mattered. He was having fun, oldest or youngest or in between, who cares? Why is there such a sadness for me about a kid being “too old for that” or trying to squeeze himself into a costume from last year or into a playhouse meant for babies? I still haven’t gotten over hearing one five-year-old say to another at a Carroll Garden playground last fall, “Why are you playing with that? (A light-up dollhouse type thing.) That’s for a 2-year-old.” I guess it just hits a nerve for someone who always wanted to stop time, starting when I was the same age as those kids. I still feel a bit bruised when the universe reminds me on a daily basis “You’re not a kid anymore.” Why can’t I be?

A little while later Wally came running over from the slide nearly in tears. His new thing is to “go together” but not every kid wants to do that. A girl told him no and pushed him away. Crestfallen is such a funny word, but that's what he was. He looked at me and said, simply, “I wanna go home.” That's a recent thing, too. Getting his feelings hurt and wanting to go home. I guess it makes sense, to seek shelter and protection. We found a traffic jam puzzle, though, and he was fine, happily "redirected". Last year at this time a disagreement would have led straight into a meltdown. Or make that a pindown (of the other kid). What's weird is Wally wouldn't have related enough to care about getting his feelings hurt. And certainly would never have come running over to me for any reason.

Feeling so bad that you want to go home is a natural reaction, but a bit extreme. Wally could really use some of those extra sensory inhibitors on the inside. The same kid who requests others to "bonk him on the head again" tears up when someone tells him to "get away". "Sticks and stones"** is such a dumb expression. It'd be nice if it were true, if we could all be like Eleanor Roosevelt withholding consent from feeling inferior, but it sure goes against nature for some of us. For Wally now it's almost the complete opposite.

The rain let up on the way home. Still it felt great to be back inside. Cozy and warm on such a dark day. Wally likes to ask now, "This is our house?" and answer himself, "Yes, this is our house." Funny that he can go home, but in a way I feel like I can't. We all want to run home when we get pushed off the slide, but after a certain point, of course, you can't. Thomas Wolfe. What is the rest of that line? It is about going back home to your family, your childhood, your "dreams of glory and of fame".*** That's what we can't go back to. But the desire to do so still feels like it's at the root of something I need to do.

My dad sometimes mentions this brilliant doctor at the V.A. who went back to retire in a little town in Texas. Texas, can you believe it? Texas? No one ever goes there on purpose, do they? (No matter how great Austin might be.) But that's where the guy was from and even if he made it in the medical capital of the world, one day he had to go back. To that little one-horse town with one bookstore in West Texas. Scarily, one bookstore may not be a defining feature of a small-town much longer. With even Barnes & Noble stores closing shop, Borders going under and the New York Public Library facing a $40 million cut, where will those of us go who grew up with libraries as temples, who want to be in silent stacks on that peak in Darien, who can sometimes only do it when first looking into Chapman's Homer, only move forward by looking into the past, only think more clearly and live more purposefully when we follow my mother's laconic injunction when I'm not getting exactly where I need to be: "Read more." She's a librarian too, she was the librarian in our elementary school. She loses herself in books, literally, like an addict. She's always having to hold herself back from reading more. (Though lately I think she does check email pretty often, and even Facebook. The urgency of now catches up to everyone.)

I can still hear her reading Blueberries for Sal or George and Martha, to us at home or to a class in school, holding the book facing out so we could all see the pictures. The pictures didn't blink, didn't move or light up. In the class, we couldn't even see them all that well. It was the storyteller's voice that carried the story, like it had for thousands of years, like it did 6,000 years ago along the banks of the Euphrates when storytellers dreamed they saw animals in the night sky.

A mom's voice so instantly conjures up childhood. Hearing it feels like going home; how could it be otherwise? It's the first voice you ever hear (unless it's blocked out by prenatal music piped in to "facilitate bonding in the womb"). If you're lucky, when you hear it you'll know you're safe at home with your cloth and wire mother, the one who will read you stories, take you out after dinner to show you fields of fireflies, and guide you to a place where you can one day feel safe enough to leave her. It's a big job, being that cloth and wire mother. It's too bad it's so much of a business these days; it doesn't seem like we are learning a whole lot from current trends in parenting. We'd be better off looking into the past. That doesn't mean, of course, that we can go back there. Yet a crazy mythical nightmare hallucinating Arkansas hope of return keeps me thinking I will. And hurtling me back into that receding future.

*John Keats, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer [also post title, Darien ref.]

**Idiom: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me"

***Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again "You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame...back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermuda, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time -- back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."

Allen Ginsberg, Howl "who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war"

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby "the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us"

Return to Gowanus

2011-05-08T14:22:00.003-04:00

Heading back there now, to hopefully finish up the final vocal tracks for The End of May EP we recorded so long ago. Oddly nervous. Thinking of the opening lines of Elizabeth Bishop's Santarem: "Of course I may be remembering it all wrong/after, after---how many years?"

Of Mice and Little Boys

2011-05-06T16:47:00.021-04:00

Wednesday May 4, 8 a.m.

I had wanted to meet Kristin and her daughter Magnolia in the botanical garden today, to let the kids run around in the fairy houses which I think will only be there for a little while longer. But instead we're here waiting for a maintenance man to fix the grate under the heater which Wally must have yanked off. We've had so many mice lately, and that's supposedly the entryway. I don't know why I didn't think to get it fixed until now.

For a month or so I'd been keeping the mice at bay with peppermint oil. It works pretty well, but it's $30 a bottle. I got tired of the expense and also just the routine sprinkling it around every night. It started to feel like a hassle, to fall into that "one more thing" category. So I dropped off, and presently the mice returned. At night I can hear them stirring around.

In December my parents gave us a humane mouse trap which had worked like a charm for them. I promptly wrapped it in a plastic bag and tucked it away in the closet. It kind of made me nervous. Just didn't want to deal with the mice up close and personal like that. Plus I'm a frequent subscriber to the theory that if you ignore a problem, it will go away. It has a high failure rate. The mice started getting bolder: I found one in the sink; another stared at me from behind the coffee machine. They were like NYC squirrels or visitors from Brazil--comfortable to the point where it's almost an affront. It's like -- shouldn't you be scurrying off by now? Something had to be done.

So a few weeks ago I squeamishly unpacked the trap and set it up with a few Cheerios before I went to bed, and timidly checked in the morning, relieved to see the trap was closed, but empty. Alex must have knocked against it with his foot. I was kind of pleased that I could throw my hands up in a passive "I tried". I set it up again that night, hoping for a similar result. I'd given up even checking when one morning last week Wally came into the kitchen squealing with joy when he found a little brown mouse twitching away in the trap. It did look awfully cute with those giant eyes. Wally kept saying, "Want to hug him. Want to pet him," and crouching down to eye level with those enormous eyes. I told him it was best not to touch him; maybe sing him a song instead. He sang ABC.

It was all going fine and it was a beautiful morning for a jaunt in the yard but when I told Wally what we were about to do (let the mouse go), he burst into tears. Catch a mouse and let him go just like that? I hadn't stopped to think that he might get attached so quickly. But of course finding your own cute little pet mouse in the morning was like me coming downstairs to find a bike on my 10th birthday. The best thing in the world. And what if after 2 minutes of me oohing and ahhing my mom had said, "Okay, now let's go give it back." Terrible.

Wally howled in the elevator, sobbed as we made our way past the recycling bins, pounded his fists into me when we got outside and I bent down to open the trap. I tried to explain that the mouse needed to find his mom and dad. That he needed to find his cousins and friends little bed and little bottle of milk. When the mouse ran out of the trap into the bushes there was a brief moment of hope. The mouse was simply dashing off to hide which meant ...Wally could seek! This was familiar territory. Off he went, face blotchy red but starting to perk up. Only all the searching, all the "Come out, come outs wherever you are" were in vain. Wally started to cry again when I told him we had to go back up, without his not with as much force as before. And he did say, to himself kind of, in a quiet sing-songy voice, "He has to find his mommy and daddy and sisters and brothers and cousins."

The next few times we went down to the yard to play, Wally looked for the "brown mouse", maybe hoping it was one of those marathon games of hide and seek and that the mouse was still tucked away behind a tree, laughing to himself about what a brilliant spot he'd happened upon. But the search started sounded more deliberately imaginary, like the brown mouse was a storybook character whose likeness Wally could conjure up at any time and just as easily let fall away into the ether.

***

We caught 7 more mice before I finally thought to have the man fix the grate. I had started to feel rustic and self-sufficient, like I could take care of the issue myself. (Next up I'd be chopping my own firewood.) But it was clear that if you build it, they will come. And keep coming. Unless you patch up the hole where they are coming in. During that week Wally got used to the routine and came to enjoy it. As soon as he found the shaky little creature in the morning he would say, "We gotta bring him outside. He's gotta find his mommy. And daddy. And Jules." (That's his therapist.) It came to be a ritual. I'd bring down a mug of coffee and something for us to eat, Wally might bring his wooden frog on a string. He loved to watch that moment of the mouse scampering away and made sure I dumped the remaining Cheerios out so there would be enough food for lunch. But then he'd clatter away with the toy frog trailing behind him, up to the fence and back.

Thursday May 5, 3:30 pm

During that mouse week, I started changing how I watered the plants. I stopped seeing it as a chore. (Oh, God, you're kidding. I still have the dishes and the bills and the laundry and the plants? Do I ever get to sit down? Which is a wild exxageration as I sit all the time and have been for the past hour and have even been known to lie down on the playground enjoying the sun with my neighbor Amy while another neighbor says, "Don't you think you should keep a closer eye on your kids?" Meanwhile we are 20 FEET AWAY from them in an enclosed toddler play area and for two minutes I've taken a break from studying their every move with the rapt attention of a child analyst.) Anyway I started to just be "mindful" about watering the plants, to appreciate whatever little contact with nature I'm lucky enough to have. I realized I had envied people who have real-life gardens, who can go out in the evening with a glass of wine and water their plants and lie around reading Billy Collins (having a garden automatically guarantees leisurely evenings filled with poetry and wine). Now I'm grateful for any contact with the natural world I have.

As I was filling up the watering can last night I told Alex about how well Wally had adjusted to the freeing-of-the-mice and how much he'd learned. I was parroting stuff from Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods about how hands-on contact with the natural world teaches so much more than any kind of traditional classroom learning could.

"So what did he learn?" Alex asked, not in a challenging way, just in a curious one which surprised me, a request for elaboration being a rare gesture for the male species. I'm more used to a grunt and nod acompanied by the face that clearly means, "Now can I be excused to go watch Ultimate Fighter?"

What did he learn? I hesitated. Wally didn't learn about the kind of mouse, its eating habits (other than Cheerios), its social structure, its habitat. He didn't even learn that there are humane ways to rid yourself of mice. I don't think he would have looked at the situation that way. He knew only that the mouse was in our house for some reason that he didn't question, that we caught him for some reason that he also didn't question, and that for the mouse's good we had to set him free.

Alex was still waiting for an answer. Ultimate Fighter could wait.

Well for starters, he learned that you might want to hug something but it might not want to hug you back, in fact it might want to bite you -- good to know for adventure hikes (or walks around NY). He learned that mice are tiny and fragile (Robert Browning's "small, sleek, cowering, timorous beast") and that we should treat them gently. That you can search and search but you might not find what you're looking for. And most importantly, that just because you love something, doesn't mean you get to keep it.

Friday May 6, 12 a.m.

Many creatures are stirring on the streets below, but for now at least, I don't hear any mice. Wally checked the trap despondently this morning, the routine disrupted. "No mouse." Sometimes in the afternoon during the mouse week he'd say, "We cannot catch mousey" because I would say, "Let's go check the trap" as a way to get him to come inside for a nap even though I knew it'd likely be empty. But today he seemed to intuit that it wasn't that we couldn't catch the mouse, but that there isn't one to catch.

It had been okay to say goodbye when the next day there'd be another (in his mind the same?) little brown mouse. But Wally adjusted the empty trap equally as well. He had learned that when it comes to a wild animal, that proverb about when you love something, set it free might end there. Don't wait for it to come back, or to finally give up its hiding spot. Simply, set it free.

I remember when our dog Sky was missing for two days. I was a mess, putting up signs, approaching dog-owners while tearily holding up pictures, searching every inch of the park, every scrap yard, calling shelters (the ticking clock of knowing they euthanize dogs within a few days), shouting her name into the void. At night we put her bed in the window -- something we read you should do, so the dog will smell it and find their way home. We slept in the livingroom so we'd hear her. In between searching, in my braver moments, I comforted myself by thinking maybe Sky simply could not be confined. She had heard the call of the wild and went in search of it.

And yet somehow we found her, and I still pinch myself that we did. A Russian couple called us and led us up a windy, woodsy path along the southwest corner of Prospect Park. Sky was huddling in the underbrush, scared and shaky but jumping all over us for joy when we arrived. Then again that wasn't all that different from her everyday greeting. Still, it was such a joyous day. A tortuous game of hide and seek with the most incredible ending. The way Sky ran--and writing this makes me think of the post about how it sounds apocryphal but Wally really did hold his head up from Day 1--but Sky just ran faster than almost any dog on the planet except maybe a star greyhound at the top of his game. So we figured a minute or two of running away from that Deli where I'd tied her up and she was already so far away from home she couldn't find her way back.

We never figured out how she got out of her harness, though getting out of devices meant to restrain clearly runs in the family. But by some miracle of fortune we got her back, and then four years later willingly gave her up. I still daydream about bringing her back to live with us. But Alex tells me that wouldn't make her life better, that it would only serve us. She lives with four dogs now and the owners (who let her sleep on the bed, just like we used to) just happen to own a doggy daycare and doggy agility course. Plus she's never alone; with us she was alone all the time (no intentional reference to the Bush song). And she has tons of space. How could you keep a dog like that in an apartment? Take them on tiny, looping walks around city streets? It's not a humane thing to do. A dog like that who whenever she could ran as fast as caninely possible and in her years made hundreds of park-goers stop and stare. She was just so graceful. There was just so much space between her feet and the ground. She was like some kind of mythical creature, destined to live up to her name.

Maybe the lesson of setting something free is written into Wally's primal memory. Sky was his first real companion. I will never get over that moment she lay down underneath his bassinet when we arrived home from the hospital. It wasn't without sadness. She moped and dragged herself around for at least two weeks. She did not want to give up her role as the designated baby, but she didn't hesitate to assume the role as Wally's protector. I still don't understand how a creature like that exists anywhere, let alone happily living among us. A creature that really would trade its life for yours in a heartbeat. And they all do that. Like I said in my dog book, any old schoolyard mutt would fight pretty much to the death for its owner. How could I not sacrifice the joy of Sky company so that she can live a happy, free dog's life?

***

I wrapped the mouse trap back up in the plastic bag and tucked it away in the closet. I'm so tired. It feels like there have been so many different lifetimes, in just a few years. Wally's three and, like he says about the plants that he helps water, "growing so big". What did he learn from releasing the mice? Maybe not as much as I did.