thank you, marley 12/31/07

"dov? dov, listen to the song we wrote. it's really amazing.
i might be drunk."

Right click-me mom, hit "save as" and enjoy my first hit single! :)

far as the smoke flies
far as the eagle cries
far as the lake lies across the land
far as a mother opens her arms
far as the lamb lays down

open your voice
open your underhanded
understanding

far as the garden grows
far as the tugboat pulls
just when you think you have it all
far as the water falls

just when you think you know
that's when it's time to go
that's when it's time to know
just when you think know

The Car

PEMA: We're here to-- Do you have a-- What were we telling them?

KURT: That we, uh, that...

KHAN is listening intently in the huddle we created, waiting for one of us to finish a sentence.

KURT: Our friend and colleague parked his car here before Christmas and then died in a plane crash and we're here to pick up his car.

KHAN blanches.

KHAN: I'm, my gosh, I'm--

We are blocks away from LAX. In KHAN's eyes, you can see him calculating, trying to recall news briefs, flipping through imaginary etiquette books, while we all stand in this circle in the parking garage wondering what to do next.

At the counter, I pull out the death certificate from my notebook. I pull out my ID.

The longer I wait for the people to find the key, to type in the date Michael parked, to find the car in the lot, to call each other on the intercom and disappear and reappear and give me more forms to fill out, the more closed-in my vision gets. My breath is shallower by the moment and my fuse is short. I see only a wall of keys on the valet board behind the counter. The very large lips of the young woman helping me. The piercing in the side of her lip, like a metallic beauty mark. The people on either side of her looking forlorn and unsure of what to say or do. I am stoic against the tears that want to come, in waves.

I get the keys. Valets have pulled the car out front. Kurt and I hug. We cry. I get in.

How do I start it?? The radio comes on with the car and plays a commercial of a new show Michael invested in. I get out and tell Kurt the synchronicity. I go back to the Mini, and I can't figure out how to adjust the seat or see the odometer or open the windows. My brain is too fogged from the black interior, the tears on the reverse slide down the back of my throat, the impossibility of mental focus on these simplest of mechanics to get me out of this garage.

I am finally out, I pull into the sunlight. And immediately I drive to the side of the road. The tears are heavy and my breath is jagged. Fucker. Jerk. Dammit. This is *not* my drive. This is his view and his scent. The performance hum under my ass and my feet is HIS ride, his familiarity.

The wheel under my hands is glossy wood and a paper-smooth leather. Its contours cradle my grip. There is life here all around me and under me. I am breathing it and applying myself to it, and moving with it.

I drive fast. Fast in his fast little car. Change the radio when I hear music he wouldn't like. Dance wildly in the driver's seat. Absorb the man in his absence.

The Bus Ride

I used to ride the bus to work and wish that on the 20-minute Express, I could muster the courage to stir up an exciting collective debate, about politics, our community, current issues. Instead of opening a book or staring out the window, the newest rider would lean in and ask what we were talking about today.

This memory popped into my head in the recent days since my friend died. Our journey through life is like a bus ride. Some people get on when you're already in progress, and sometime later they get off; but in that ride you've been changed. You've participated in a rousing discussion, you've engaged in fearless dialogue, you've provoked the social experiment that lies in you and everyone waiting to play with you if you're courageous enough to just play. You've utilized those spare 20 minutes. For good! And learned something you never knew about yourself and the person next to you and the person next to that one. And before you know it, all those 20 minutes are stacked into days and weeks, a lifetime; and the bus door opens, and a passenger waves goodbye, and he gets off at his stop, while the buzz he stirred in your bus continues, and your journey, continues.

Real Emotions Have Curves

So tired.
13 hour day today.
Slow parabola of emotion.
It's actually shaped like thisbut I like the word parabola.
Many emails from friends of long ago contact helped throughout the day.
Many laughing moments with Michael on my mind. Jerk has us working our asses off.
Much love for a bright light. Two very bright lights.
Remind me to tell you about the bus ride.
I'm serious. Remind me or I'll forget. And it's good.
G'night.

1 Survivor

The miracle is Francesca Lewis, 12 years old. She survived a plane crash in the jungle and the three days it took to find her. Francesca, bless her, is the only survivor. My friend Michael, 37, and his daughter, Talia, 13, did not survive. The pilot was also lost. Search crews found the plane this afternoon in mountainous terrain in Panama.

One Survivor, Three Dead in Panama Plane Crash

Thank you all for your prayers and good thoughts and love you sent their way. Their families can still use them if you have more in you.

PRAY hard PRAY now

My boss and his daughter and two others are missing after their plane was spotted flying low over a forested area of Panama.

Even if you don't believe, fake it and pray. Send positive images as you open presents, send love as you share dinner with your families. Give Christmas another miracle.
Panama searches for missing plane, 3 American passengers

Hard to Swallow

Today's turkey sandwich
The bad service at the restaurant from where today's turkey sandwich came.
Obese pallid unhappy-looking people.
Obese pallid unhappy-looking people with stringy hair hovering at poverty level in the town from where I come.
The town from where I come.
Consumerism.
Which is to say, the status of the dollar.
Rather, the status of dollars plural.
Meth...
Crumbling the edges of the town from where I come.
Privilege
And striving for it.
Holidays sometimes.

Guest Blogger--Lisa

Ok...so we recently got kittens. If you've been hanging out at Pema's park bench, you know that Pema has already posted about this, as has her friend Nico. I am borderline a crazy-cat lady, therefore another kitten-post. They are now officially named: Zola and Brie. After cheeses (Zola is short for gorgonzola). Anyhoo, this two kitties had two sisters, and Pema and Tania had to hold me back from getting all four. I was told by many that the rule is that you can have one cat per person in your house. Any more, and you fit the categorical definition of crazy-cat-lady. FINE. Someday I will be, but for now, I will express it in the form of photos.

Law Abiding

I think I learned an unspoken physical law of the universe. I was reading my bitch book when it finally occurred to me that this coy peek-a-boo of a mating ritual we adult humans dance is indeed real. As much as I have abhorred reading this tripe, I suddenly got that I am dancing it too, with my feathers and foot-stamps and fluttery fa la la.

Oh, but it's true.

During this long dating run (who said you had to train for a marathon--this marathon IS the training), I've found it curious that the people I really liked cut out early. And those I didn't have feelings for thought I was the coolest most amazing fabulation conflagration.

There was a guy who swooned, actually swooned, when we kissed (that I wasn't swooning wasn't okay). There was a guy who professed his effulgent heart maybe three weeks in. Then there are the immediate WE-talkers..."We'll have to do that someday..." said, like, on the first date. All of these people had WE-talk in common. I raise an eyebrow at immediate WE-talk.

So here I am reading about how to bump up my bitch and I realize that everything the author's been telling us in this book about MEN is true for ME. She's saying, "play it cool and they'll come running." And it's not that I have played it hot or urgent or needy with the folks I've liked. But I haven't played it COY. And if MY attraction habits are any indication of the rule, it's the COY we go after! Naturally, the guys I've had less interest in have met with the long arm of not-so-fast-there-mister. And they've gone crazy for me. Yet the guys I've thought were cool enough to open up with were the ones who sang sayonara as they escaped out the back. Interesting. F'ing ridiculous, but intriguing if you're willing to let it.

Alright. Now. Who can I ignore? Ah yes, the new guy. Who cares if he likes the damn purse.

Family Rocks

Rob & Sue the groovy two.

Revolutionary Food

If you squint, you can find peace in this picture.
I had it for lunch at the Indian buffet and it was peaceful indeed. "Green Peace and Potatoes"

Introducing the LIP-HUG

I worked my arse off to plan the office holiday party. Six weeks of invite lists, elusive venue managers, plans that fell through, strings that got pulled, deciding sit-down dinner or all-night appetizers, stylish desserts... or...or...are these people gonna be happy?? I stress about throwing a good party. I really like a good party.

So it happened that after weeks of planning--and working--my ass off, the night of the party I drank off the rest of what was left of it.

This is a rare--rare--occurrence.

Let me introduce a rarer occurrence: the lip hug. Playing steadfast (er, drunk) ear to the drunk and emotional wife of my colleague, I was rapt audience to Erica as she cried and talked. We bonded. We were like, tight. Sisters by this point.

Fast forward to the car ride home in a black stretch SUV. There were three of us couples, including Erica and her husband, another colleague and wife, and Phil, my date. Music blared and the chatting never ceased. We were there for each other, Erica and me. We had each other's backs. And then we reached Erica and her husband's house, the first stop; and in the goodbye, the kiss-and-hug Erica and I meant to exchange, turned into a k-i-s-s and quick hug. It was like a five-second exchange. Right there between my date and my colleague, the loud music and Erica's man.

In my state, I was vaguely aware of this extended kiss goodbye. It was nothing goopy; imagine instead a long, joyous squeeze of a hug where you even squeal a little, but this hug took place between our lips! When the vagueness finally cleared and my brain registered that our lips were still touching, I gave her a quick squeeze and cheerfully hugged her husband goodbye. Nothing to see here people! Nothing strange at all about that extended goodbye where time slowed down and everybody stopped talking to wonder at it.

Then I promptly forgot about it.

Until the next morning, as the sun filtered into my room, along with images from a pickled night before, and bam, the memory of...the lip hug goodbye.

Folly Lolly Laa La La La Laa

'Tis the season to be spendyBreak the bank and pray to trendy

like BALL PARK franks

they PLUMP when you cook'em.

Performance Enhancers

Saved by the Beauty

After I pushed the crosswalk button, I did something not rare to my nature but rare in my work rush. The winter sun hit the street in such a way, down the few blocks that head toward the ocean, that I got caught up in the pretty view and my gratitude for living in such a beautiful place. A certain peace washed over me. Without looking, I knew the signal light was turning green--I know the timing. But I was held up in that moment. Till I let it go and stepped into the street and watched a car drive right through the crosswalk. She didn't even see her light turn red. If I had walked with the light three seconds earlier, I'd be, as the kids say, all up in her grille. Thank you, beauty.

Seriously, What's the Difference?

"Former US Senator George Mitchell has outed some of the biggest names in baseball in his long awaited report on steroid usage in Major League Baseball.
...Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Eric Gagne, Miguel Tejada, David Justice, Chuck Knoblauch and Andy Pettitte.
...So pervasive was the use of the substances, Mr Mitchell warned that 'hundreds of thousands of children' were also using steroids to get ahead in the sport."

VERSUS

"PAMELA ANDERSON has been named TV's Sexiest Woman Ever."
HELLO BOOBS ON STEROIDS, LIPS ON JUICE
But wait, what? You're a female over the age of 12 and you haven't considered medi-spa-ing into the silicon, collagen, better-than-botox, lipo-sucked new frontiers of beauty? I'm sorry. You don't exist.

Who's shouting about the hundreds of thousands of girls and women starving and carving to get ahead in the "sport" of their lives? It's open season on the human body, people. Get it. Or don't buy in.

Uhhmm...

Is it possible? That I can rattle off my boss's address and phone number when the phone rep asks, but when she asks my name....my r.e.c.a.l.l...f.a.i.l.s.
Um, Uuhh, P-, Pema. Heh. Right.

thank you nico!

moar funny pictures

Introducing...!!!

Zola!


and Brie!
...short for Gorgonzola and Brie&Honey, because Lisa and Tania are such HUGE cheese fans. The names of course are pending until purchased, subject to change or alteration, unstable at the moment as a dollar arm-wrestling a Euro. Lisa likes to refer to them as Gorgonzola Maureen Shazam Willow, and BrianneHoney Isis Buffy, or some such string of all the kitty name possibilities. Tania likes to try on Honey instead of Brie. Whoever they are, right now there are eight little furry feet flying around the corners upstairs making kitty rumble noises overhead. So cute. And surely there will be more pix to come. Here's Lisa's blog so you can see more now...

Ella & Aunty!!

mixin it up meow-like

We got kittens! (pictures to come)
Apparently there is a kitten season, which it currently is not. So our new little fuzz flips, who arrived during this week of Hannukah--aka the miracle of light--are being referred to as our little miracles of Hannukah.

They are as yet unnamed, but some monikers in the meow mix are these:

Personal faves - Shazam and Isis

the rest:
Gilda and Lucy
Zola and Roxie
Cricket and Daisy
Emily and Charlotte
Rocket and Cherry
Bugsy and Bo-Peep

and about a hundred other silly options. No doubt they will have one thousand and six nicknames once their real names surface. But for now, we focus on the real ones.

They're SO cute! And they're hilarious. Tania has been kitten-drunk for two days. Her favorite word to chirp is "kittens!"

Poetextry

A+
:)
BTW, my mom and Will think you are awesome (so do I, but u already know that). Sorry we screwed up your date with Lee.
U KICK ASS!!!
Hello heather Ella and i r up now does 1030 or 11 sound ok what Hotel r u at?
You? Yes. Always...
Okay, perhaps you affected my brain, because I could never really think straight...But it always started with the shiver I'd get from being close to u.
No, only if YOU got close to me...
Hey, I've seen 2 ladies in the past couple of dayz, that resemble u alot...Making me think of how unnerving ur beauty is...!! In any case, howd your boss enjoy Pace?
Hey Pems! A student in my acting class is producing a monologue festival. Call him if you want to submit some material. Crister 4155554764 Tania
NYC is a better place when ur here. Can't wait to lunch tomorrow.
305e87#9LW
Have a good evening:-) --Troy--
Brandy just sang hallelujah!
Darling.. It's your very favorite whore.. :)
Thought of you today. Several times. We need to talk. At the strip club now but feel free to text.
Would U like to go with me to SOHO Thur? Tommy Castro Band! 9:00pm
Hey-this is Tifanie's new cell number.
Fwd: Hey pema! Wishing you a very Happy New year for 2007!! -van
Fernando new num.please save
(RE:)Jetscott@yahoo.com
Matthewsiwiggins@hotmail.com
81 west st 2n nyc 10006
Teo says hi. He throws a big fluffy pillow at u. Have a wonderful day, pemicita!
Pema! I looove you! My email is indigocoffeebean@earthlink.net

The Book

it is so hard to stand behind my inner bitch.

The Exchange

My boss got his braces off, so today I brought him an apple.

Then he gave me a book called, Why Men Marry BITCHES.

It says that. BITCHES in all caps.

Being unmarried, I took back the apple.

Have you Teetered Today?

This is Your Brain on Friday-at-5pm

I'm sorry, did you? Did you say something?

Testing 123

There's a new guy. There's a new purse. The litmus purse.

Overheard

- What? You love me?
- No.
- What did you say?
- Can. you. get. a real. gun. for. me.
- (dismissive, immediate, impassive) No. Real guns are not allowed.

...said the 10-year-old to the 7 year-old at the martial arts studio, tonight as I waited for my kickboxing class to start.

On "Daily"

If you check daily, you may've noticed that my daily has not been, well, daily. I've considered this since day four of my blog when the funny dried up. All of a sudden, the funny things that were happening daily, they slowed down. They happen every few days, not every last day of the cyber year. Turns out.

I grapple then with the title of this bloggiepoo until I realize that as long as some of you are checking daily, then how about that, the title fits. Like how I just passed that buck? A buck a day adds up, though. You'll be rich in no time. And I'll keep typing.
:-)

I'm Plagiarizing

Because Nico relays it so well.
thehumanproject.wordpress.com
Yeah, what he said. Except, insert "Park Bench Daily."

Morning Dreams

...have been weird on vacation. Only on the first night, sleeping between high thread count sheets and a nest of pillows in a suite of my own, did I wake up leisurely. Since then I remember two in particular:

#1
A room on my parents' house that I'd never seen before--it's my brother's, who has been dead for 20 years, cracker crumbs leading to the closed window that, when opened, leads to a pool. The pool water is a plastic container, like waterbed material. Mom jumps in.

#2
I'm making out with a friend who is recently married.

and Surprise

Omaha is not bad. It's pretty amazing, actually. Surprisingly hip. Not flat. Did you know plains roll? They dip and swell and have trees and sky, it's beautiful. Omaha rocks. Who. Knew.



My brother and Ella, his new little creation.

Plain

I am in Omaha.
Omaha.

Beauty

Beauty, on the other hand.
Gorge me on it.
Please, gorge me with beauty.

New

Number one reason to change the holiday party venue:

It's too small and it's overrun by people so young, they haven't even been removed from their plastic wrappers yet.

Pretty

I don't trust pretty.

Is that bad?

It's just, pretty scares me.

I'm dating a guy so pretty he makes my teeth hurt.

Last time I got this close to pretty, I woke up a year later on the floor of a hotel bathroom, cold tiles and middle of the night compressing my sobs into a boxed-in time warp, back to day-one when the voice in my head said, actually said loud, "she will devastate you."

Pretty is a rocky road. Pretty is a mystery. Pretty is a lobotomy. Mine.

No, I don't trust pretty.

Postal Torpor

You know the experience of standing in line at the post office. Second only to waiting to be called at the DMV, itself just this side of waiting for Godot.

For some reason, I muster more patience at the Post Office. Imagine, standing on your feet all day, meeting face to face with annoyed people who have been glaring at you each of their 30 minutes in line. Then pushing their papers around and taping their boxes. It calls for a sweeter compassion.

Yesterday I zip into the post office on the way to lunch to find I've forgotten to pay for my P.O. box, and now I'm locked out of it. But great clicking heels of fortune, the line is EMPTY! There are only two people working but with no line, this'll be a breeze...tick...tock...tick...you've got to be...kidding...tock...me...tick...

WHAT is happening? It becomes clear. Patron number 1 is poring over sheets of stamps, deciding on one, changing her mind, deciding on others. Patron number 2 is locked in a quiet but intense conversation with the only other postal worker. They are gesturing with their hands and their faces are expressive. Patron number 2's stack of mail in front of her and it becomes clear that they are NOT talking about mail...tick, tock, tick...

People are gathering behind me. Patron number 2 is so easy in this conversation, I wonder who she is. How does she stand there in this conversation, with only one other worker on duty, and take up all this time, with no compunction whatsoever? She's happy as a lark as the line accumulates. If I weren't so curious, I would be furious. This social more is almost unbreakable in this fast-paced country and she's smashing it to bits. I mean, at least you could LOOK guilty, ACT busy, acknowledge the waiting humanity with a shoulder shrug and a lopsided smile.

After separating and straightening each of Patron number 1's several dollar bills with a snap, the only postal worker working places them next to each other on the counter, then gathers them and places them preciously in the tray. I'm up. I step to it and, while he's away investigating my locked box, I decide to listen conspicuously to the pair STILL talking at the other window. Who could she be? Who is she to this postal worker that the six people now in line do not exist?

I can barely make out what she's saying, but under my obvious scrutiny, she begins to move. But in mid-step she returns and says, "How's Hector?" Postal Worker reponds. She's back and chatting. "What about Lula?" "And Vic?"

I finally get it. Who can stand at the post office window and chat as if no line stacked up behind her? Whose wits can match those of the quietly satisfied, unhurried tree sloth variety of postal worker? ANOTHER POSTAL WORKER!!

She used to work there and she's catching on up with the chit chat from this side of the counter. My postal guy comes back with my mail and only then does the conversation next to me begin to end. The people in line are so used to the yawning stretches of time there, they haven't even noticed.

Underwater

Yesterday after work, I was so tired and pulled in so many directions I hid in the bath in snorkel gear.

How do parents do it?


Photo credit

Retail Medicine

The dress is so beautiful I'm taking it off the rack.

Nevermind it's a size small and $205 on sale. I hold it up to myself in the mirror and admire the ivory crocheted top with the sweeping neckline, the navy floral skirt with the orange oversized flowers spilt down its sides. It's me if ever I hanged on a clothing rack. Beautiful and thoroughly original, I'm saying to myself, "just hold it up to you," then, "maybe you could just try it on anyway."

I am not a size small. There are five minutes left to my lunch. I'm gripping onto the hanger and these...delusions! I say, "Hang it up, Pema. Get ahold of yourself."

I hang it up. I shake my head a swift jerk as I walk away.

I say to myself, "You just said, 'Get ahold of yourself.'"

Dress lust.

Platinum Medicine

Eagle Medicine

"...the dance that leads to flight involves the conquering of fear and the willingness to join the adventure that you are co-creating with the Divine.

...If you have pulled Eagle in the reverse, you have forgotten your power and connectedness to the Great Spirit. You may have failed to recognize the light that is always available for those who seek illumination. Heal your broken wings with love. Loving yourself as you are loved by the Great Spirit is the lesson which the contrary Eagle brings."

-Jamie Sams, Medicine Cards

Why Do Whales Sing?

"It turns out that humpbacks near the Great Barrier Reef do so for one main reason--sex. Joshua Smith, a marine biologist at Australia's University of Queensland, has found that though female humpbacks don't actually sing, male songs can be heard up to 12 miles away and can last as long as 22 hours. They are 'likely an important courtship display.' That's not to say the humpbacks are wooing life partners. 'When a male is singing and a female is present, it is not like that male is courting that female for life,' Smith wrote. 'The function of song would be more for immediate reproductive benefits, more like a one-night stand.'"

(Frank Burns writing for Audubon Magazine)

Aka "blowing hot air," in the whale world and human night life as it turns out.

Boogle Sings

Map of a Google journey, which on Halloween night I will call Boogle.

1 - how to sing
2 - Web: What if I told you that it was not only possible, but that it was guaranteed If you will purchase the, "Vocal Release At Home Singing Instruction Kit," today and follow it's detailed incites for just one year?
3 - Boogle Maps: We could not calculate driving directions between how and sing.
4 - Boogle Images: "Remembering How To Sing"
5 - Boogle News: Win tickets to meet Black Sabbath
6 - Boogle Video : TRAVIS "Sing" (Really Great!!)

Duh

So, almost immediately after gushing past my self-censorship hurdle with the last post, I discover with a laugh that my dad is not the sole reason I keep my mouth shut when the shy patrol is out. My dad is just the guy I've placed it on all these years.

It's me. I'M the reason. It's me who's got the good-girl syndrome. All my life I'm the one carefully crafting my good girl image to garner as much popularity as possible. Okay, as much love as possible. Love is deeper than popularity. And the good-girl syndrome came out of a very real need to be loved. (Gotta be good to get it.)

But I'm here now, past the part of life where I wonder where to get it and how. Wonder who will love me if my daddy don't. Wonder the different ways I'd smash my image to bits at Grandma's retirement home if I say anything without a smile. Show up at church with my forehead pierced in a skirt short as sin. I exaggerate. But my point is made. I'm loved. I'm original. And I'm scintillating as a stump as long as I'm hiding out behind fears that are more old habits than bonafide terrors.

Like A Virgin

When I was 13, my friends and I huddled during the break of our Christian Youth Theater class to hear Monica Thayer regale us with tales of seeing MADONNA in concert. "Like a Virgin" was breaking the sound barrier into the pop stratosphere. Always a half-step behind the times (due no doubt to the constant Alice in Wonderland journey in my head), Madonna to me was just a catchy new singer. She was on the radio a lot. She wore underwear outside her clothes. Her songs were cool and easy to remember. Testament my innocence, part of that huddle was my education that "Into the Groove" meant way more than dancing.

Monica laid it out scene by scene, the concert. But to this day, what freezes me in time is what she said Madonna did with her boom box. I'm hanging on every detail, the lacy white dress and corset, the leather jacket and ratted hair, the dancing. And then she says Madonna STRADDLES her huge boom box and starts GRINDING on it while she's singing!! And then, bye-bye, I am lost, suddenly separate from the mass of girl bonding, traveling through my head with the implications..."Does her DAD see her concerts??"

The question has echoed through my head ever since. Mostly in relation to my surfacing as an artist. I say "artist" as someone who creates something for popular consumption, said creation always coming from the heart, the head, the grind of life and observation of the individual in relation to the whole...whether in concert with the whole or isolated from it.

See that? See that intellectual hat dance? It's my default. Because the poet, the artist, the exhibitionist in me (because, sitting naked on a park bench after all is what if it's not exhibitionism?) is scared to be naked in front of my DAD. How does Madonna do it?

All of this to say that Tania and Lisa and I were laughing about my ancient dilemma. I had a funny blog to post and couldn't because I hit my Dad-wall. So we toyed with creating a parental rating system...along the lines of PG and NC-17, but more like NP (No Parents) or for especially shocking posts ND (No Dads). For the protection of their innocence. Maybe it'll grow to include NM (No Men) for especially gorey girl talk, or FG (Female Guidance), for those men who may want to venture in, but need support.

My self-pep-talk on the subject last night, after a vodka gimlet at Laura's bday party: I'm 36. I'm an adult now. I have... I have .... sss- ... (excuse me while I get liquored up to welcome to these next letters in succession) ... oh wait, let's implement the rating system (ND: Warning, the material you are about to read may be unsuitable to some parents. Reader discretion advised.)

I have sex, goddamnit. Well, on a good day anyway, when the stars are aligned and the guy is right.

How is it that life has been a series of ever more situations for coming out? I came out when I was dating women. I begrudgingly came out again when I had my first boyfriend after many years on the home team. I'm effectively coming out right here, though this particular outing is like being female and coming out as female, or being Caucasian and coming out as such, or being very clearly brunette and coming out as…BRUNETTE!! Clearly I am all of those things. Clearly I am 36, I am not wearing a nun’s habit, I’m a contemporary woman in these scintillating times, and yet, just in case you wondered if it is NOT the way it seems, rest easy, my friend. It is all painfully, joyfully, obviously the way it seems.


Photo Credit

Starlit

I can't say that Lisa is an astronomy buff (though she had us all up at 3am to watch the recent lunar eclipse). I can say that she admires the planets and the place they hang, the effect of their spin on the night sky and their luminous once-in-every-say-10,000-years habits.

Maybe it's something similar that Tania appreciates in theatre: the moment it creates is often spectacular, often beautiful, and is precious because it is never to return the way it is in this moment.

Venus is blazing in the night sky at present. Tania and Lisa have this magnificent tree-house-like bedroom, a bank of windows that hover just over the treetops in the edge of a valley. No blinds, so they are exposed to the wide open sky and its dramatic displays. And for the past three nights, Venus has been bearing down on Lisa like a landing plane. Tania, being a deeper sleeper, has missed the spotlight show.

Until last night. When she awoke at four. She didn't see it, and through a sleepy mumble channeled Edward G. Robinson from The Ten Commandments. In the same Brooklyn-esque, '30's era, cigar-chomping voice that queried: "Where's your God now, Moses?" Tania asked: "Wheya's ya stah now, Lisa?"

Unfortunately, Tania's brilliance, quite matching that of Venus, sounded to Lisa like: "mnah mnah mhnah star, Lisa? mnah mnah mnah?"

Photo credit

Busted

Feeling surly tonight.
Some friends touched on a hot spot:
My lack of self respect in the company of men.
Isn't that weird?
Haughty and self-important as I get?
That I could lose my words completely
and let some flake flake his flakey flake
without so much as a "beat it, bastard" from me?

They're referring to the guy who crossed my path two weeks ago.
We ran into each other out on the bike path at the beach.
The last I had heard from him was months earlier, when after several intriguing and fun nights out, and an invite for another one, he dissolved to flake-town.
But, did I, out there on the bike path, say, oh "hey, it's you, the jerk that disappeared into nowhere land"?
Nope.
I rollerbladed next to him while he ran, participating in nearly three miles of conversation, as if months hadn't passed.
Then we planned and met for dinner to discuss a story project.
Then we kissed.
It had led up to that hadn't it?
All those conversations? This new light. This new angle of our time together.
Please.
My friends are wondering why he shouldn't flake again, since I've set that standard already.
They're wondering why I always complain about attracting flakes when it's me who's allowing it from the get-go. With my wordlessness.
I got it.
But not without this mood. And this sensation of getting busted open.
I got busted.
There are redeeming qualities to getting called out.
But sometimes you just have to be ugly first.

Thou fawning onion-eyed scullion

Feeling uninspired?
http://www.bishopswaltham.net/BitsBobs/handyPhrases.html

Birthday Hat

Princess Gramcracker's 95th. It's a wonder she never had a crown before, she wore it so easily.

Who ordered the tuna on rye?

Chivalry Lives

Allen and I took a spontaneous dip in the ocean one night.
Afterward, we collected our clothes and got half-dressed for the walk to the car.
With the sky that deep blue and cold ocean water rushing against my skin's memory, my lips got in the way of his when he reached to open the car door for me.
We kissed.
And kissed...Allen in boxers, one hand holding his pants, and the other still reaching to open my door.

Fix it with Physics

...A transformation story for all those who were saddened by the love story...

A NEW story of loss to love in the language of physics:

(Titles taken from the main menu page of Lew Paxton Price
--a website dedicated to articles on physics. I rearranged them to tell a common love story.)

THE VORTEX

INERTIA

INTRODUCTION TO ADVANCED ETHER (DARK ENERGY) THEORY

DARK MATTER SOLUTION (Constant Velocity Point)

PHOTONS AND RED SHIFT (THE REALITY)

INTRODUCTION TO MAGNETISM

MAGNETISM

LIGHT AND ELECTRON SPIN

THE PAULI EXCLUSION PRINCIPLE & HEISENBERG'S UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE

TIME DILATION AND ETHER RELATIVITY

The EXPANDING UNIVERSE, QUASARS, and the K EFFECT

TIME

Newton & the Human Heart

Love in the language of physics, from first blush to last flush:

(Titles taken from the main menu page of Lew Paxton Price
--a website dedicated to articles on physics. I rearranged them to tell a common love story.)


A Love Story in Physics

INTRODUCTION TO MAGNETISM


MAGNETISM


TIME DILATION AND ETHER RELATIVITY


LIGHT AND ELECTRON SPIN


The EXPANDING UNIVERSE, QUASARS, and the K EFFECT


THE PAULI EXCLUSION PRINCIPLE & HEISENBERG'S UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE


TIME


BEHIND LIGHT'S ILLUSION


PHOTONS AND RED SHIFT (THE REALITY)


WHAT IS GRAVITY?


INTRODUCTION TO ADVANCED ETHER (DARK ENERGY) THEORY


THE VORTEX


DARK MATTER SOLUTION (Constant Velocity Point)

INERTIA

Buy An Acre On The Moon??

Dude. Really?

www.lunarregistry.com

"...we are offering a limited number of "shares" in lunar property in order to fund privatized exploration, settlement and development of the Moon. The value of the shares is directly related to their location on the Moon"

Who owns that "real" estate? Moon squatters? Cheese makers? New Wisconsin, the 52nd state.

(Haven't you heard? #51 is the United State of Insanity)

Vegetarian Options

Matt: Did you hear about mining the moon for H3 as the new fuel?

Pema: There's a good idea. Deplete the resources on Earth, then go to the moon and f*ck with those resources till it messes with gravity here and we can fart our way through space.

Matt: I don't think the moon has that much to do with the Earth's gravity.

Pema: Well can we still fart our way through space?

Mapless

"A man's road back to himself is a return from his spiritual exile, for that is what a personal history amounts to--exile."

--from Saul Bellow's The Actual

Friends, I am writing a book...which, as it turns out, it is my return from exile. However, the return from exile is still a hike through the wilderness. I'm hiking these next few days with a vengeance. So please forgive my break from the daily Bench until MONDAY upcoming.

Thanks for reading. :-)

Not Poetry

The word "bisexual" is not poetic. It'd be like trying to fit the word "refrigerator" into a poem.

It's not a poetic way to describe a life. Like any label or title or job position I suppose, the name is not so poetic.

The life it leads to is.


12.30.98 journal entry
if memory serves, i was just months into dating men again after a several year hiatus.

Journal Entry 8/24/01 nyc

8/24/01
i got out of the apartment today and this is what happened. another poem. perhaps i'll keep writing and call them The Arrival Poems. Maybe they'll keep visiting me, these poems, for these three years. I'll call the book Here Now, since i imagine i'll continually feel like i am arriving as my studies and new york both uncover more and more. Here's today's.

Central Park

That squeak that sneakers make
is short-screeching with
"blats" of basketballs
and the incomprehensible
language of men on the court,
voices captured in a canopy of trees.
A breeze blows through them,
rustling leaves, weaving
between slick shoulders.
Feet pound concrete,
voices rise, "You ain't shit!"
Ball stops.
But the beauty of this
place persists.
Sun slants through effortless green
an oasis in a wider perimeter
of more concrete
more pacing feet
and buildings in rows like cornfields.

My Friend the Lawyer Said

"Marry a lawyer. It'll make splitting up that much easier.
Especially if you're both lawyers."

Like Still Life

...waiting to be got.

I think that's me.

I'm still scratching my head over the guy who has a great time, asks to go out again, and then forgets how to devise the actual contact, you know phone, email, telepathy.

I'm not talking about one guy, although I could name one at present. I'm talking about the several over time who have intrigued me enough to make me curious, and then dissipated into vapor, communication skills clattering to the ground where their feet once stood.

It's hard not to take personally, like, "What did I do? How am I contributing? Why are they cheeking their nuts like a chipmunk in Autumn?"

Regina suggested I put those questions to the men in question.
I suggested it could be the perfect prescription for a neurotic complex. Curious as I am to know.

A Poet's Poem

Invocation

First, there is a window, and an ocean beyond it.
Waves come in close.
Surfers sit and bob for want of better ones.
Inside, a small, framed eagle lands,
feet forward, feathers ruffled, reaching.
An orange.
A silver stein holds pens,
red, blue, black ballpoint.
Then me. Living by design.
Invoking passage for any feeling,
come now, *the* feelings that things bring;
that speak through themselves
like still life, waiting to be got.

2007 PT

Hmmm

Okay, so if you're ever curious, with time on your hands, and you're sitting in front of your computer, say, when it's dark out and maybe late, log on to Craigslist. Look where you will. Find roommates, furniture, advice, activities, people you know and don't. Stir up a commotion, dip your toe into internet dating (if you're willing to try your patience). But most of all, find things you never thought to find, and RESPOND to them. I swear your world will turn kaleidoscopic.

"Foot in Panama" here, is in response to a reflexology-trained lover of feet looking to give foot massages and pedicures. My dogs are barkin', but more, my curiosity is humming...who is this guy? We'll see if he responds back.

Steve's Inspiring, Intriguing, Uplifting & Very Cool Movie Trailer

http://www.shiftingages.com/trailer.html

Say Wha?

PEMA: Oh yeah, I started a blog called "Park Bench Daily."

STEVE: You have a blog called PUNK BITCH DAILY ??!

Affair of the Heart

Street outside SHOE STORE
EVENING

SUZY and PEMA EXIT shoe store and WALK down the street.
They WAIT at the light.

PEMA: They were beautiful.

SUZY: They were very sexy.

PEMA: They were perfect! I miss them. I feel like fell in love with them.

SUZY: You fell in love with yourself in them.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I was thinking about Allen today. Each day of the two months and some that we dated, I coached/coaxed myself into being open, loving, focused on love rather than fear...of whatever neurosis du jour that clams me up. As a result, I was happy. I had a GREAT time with the guy. I really really liked him.

But after we stopped dating, it became clear all the ways he wasn't a good fit for me.

"So why did I like him so much?" myself asked myself.

I was pondering this a moment when my inner sensei said, "Ah, Grasshoppa, you fell in love with yourself when you were with him."

Write This Poem, Continued

Here's some more to go on. See also Nichol's comment from yesterday for more possibilities.

Words like money
Words like wine
If truth were currency
Would we be fine?

Would we be spent
by all your lyin'?
Would we be drowned
in all my cryin'?

Pennies in the palm
Grapes on the vine...


(...now you, my reading friends!)

Write This Poem...

Words like money
Words like wine


(drop me some lines. we'll finish it together.)

Eating Your Expectations

You know how when you've gotta do something important...like write or study, or have an important talk, you can think of a hundred other things to do before you do it? Worst of all these is the hunger. When all else fails, and all procrastinates are out of the way, in kicks the hunger.

Imagine my surprise, then, upon entering the reading room at the New York Public Library. Mind you, I've been romancing about this place since I was old enough to dream of books and broad tables, marble and storied ceilings, and pages turning in the collective quiet.

I'm here. I've passed the SWAT guys with machine guns at the front door (can you believe? now that's value placed on books), made a tour, used the ladies' room, and passed three posts of internal library security to enter this innermost chamber. I ogle, I saunter, I finally sit. I open my backpack, my books. Ready my pen. I'm full. Full of New York, full of anticipation, full of age. I'm ready.

It smells like bread baking in here. Are they piping it in? Warm, sweet bread.

Can they be serious?

My pen stares at my page, totally indifferent.

Is it coming from outside? No. It's a warm, inside scent. It's soft and inviting and not exactly dusty, more dusted, with honeydust. It is croissant-scent laced with the promise of marzipan.

The page yawns, blank. My pen looks up at me like a Basset hound.

I get up to ask the nice security man who checked my bag on the way in, "Does it always smell like this in here?" He looks vaguely like a Basset hound, too. He regales me with the charm and mystery of this daily, eternal scent. I picture parchment pages between aging leather bindings, on shelves of aromatic wood housed in beautiful marble with great care.

I return to my chair...heavy wood to match the table. Pen sidles up to paper.

No, it's Grandpa's homemade bread that would rise in a dark corner in its crock for hours till he baked it and we died and went to Heaven with every bite.

I'm in the New York Public Library. I'm a writer. An adult. I made it. I have time enough on my hands to be that. Do that. Be here.

I want a pastry.

Express Yourself

C/o your favorite Apple and mine.

Um, Foodstamps?

I'm standing at the corner of State and De La Guerra in Santa Barbara and a gold-rimmed Mercedes slides up. Inside, the driver in a sharp blazer and dashing turtleneck leans to his window to ask:

""'Scuze me, can you tell me where the welfare office is?"

Fed Back

I copied this into my journal on 9/15/07, from the NY Historical Museum guest book outside the "Chelsea Jeans" memorial, "Elegy in Dust." The exhibit is a store front of jeans and clothing, preserved in its post 9/11 state, colors gone gray with PILES of dust all over the racks, the floor, the clothing.

"9/11/07

Six years. I've seen many of the images before, but not for a long time. First reaction = sadness, a terrible, aching, naively unexpected sadness. However, that eventually gave way to anger--not the red hot anger of the folks in the photo telling Bin Laden they were coming to kick his butt, but a dull anger at us, for how we as a nation responded. Cynical people took these events and used them to accomplish unrelated goals. But we let them. The USA is still a democracy, crippled though it's been by the politics of the past several years. We get the leaders we deserve, and I so want to believe we deserve better."

Bob ____, NYC"

And another entry:

"We all need to STOP questioning the motives of our own country and GREAT leaders and remember that this was caused by those who WISH they have what we do.

N.Y.C. Atty!"

A Habit of Lists

Because I said I would, here are the quotes I copied from the 9/11 photos at the NY Historical Society exhibit. Days have passed between my being there and being here, and I thought for a few minutes that I might not post the quotes after all. Am I bombarding people with 9/11? But it strikes me over and over again that what I'm doing is healing. And others, from what I hear in response, are healing along with me by watching, listening to, or being a part of mine.

It's raining outside here in Santa Barbara. Land of the Maxfield Parrish sunlight and clouds, views and mountains, sky. It rained in NYC last week on 9/11. Interesting to me that out of two galleries of walls filled with 11" x 17" photos, the one that struck me the most was a simple cityscape, point of view looking down an EMPTY avenue, its even more distinguishing factor being the absolute clarity of sunlight the photo caught. That is the photo I got stuck in all those years ago, and that's where I've been walking around since.

Going back to NYC last week was the first time I "faced the music" so to speak. Went to the observances. Let my grief surface. Let myself be someone who grieves over this trauma. Before I returned, I was so interested in how it is we move on from grief. How it transforms us, and how we in turn transform. But being at the World Trade Center site, as the names were being read, as the rain was falling, across the water as the lights were shining upward into a black sky in remembrance, made me realize there is no hurry. There is no scramble to be fixed. Grief takes its slow steady time, unwinding like the coils of a snake languishing in sunlight, loathe to leave the rock that has been warming it. Grief transforms. We are changed by it. But first grief is grief. Its own spirit and will and breath. Before it moves through, it inhabits. The exquisite journey is to cohabitate.

"Not in our name."
"This is no time for cowboys." (Sign around the neck of a life-sized John Wayne cut-out.)
"The news makes me cry."
"Patriotism scares me."
"END WAR" (Written in block letters inside a ONE WAY sign.)
"PWPD/FD Meet Here - FLFD" (Written in the ash and dust on a van window.)

Names from some of the photos, that were on missing persons flyers:

Farah Jeudy
Antoine Jeudy
Mary Ortale
Peter Ortale
Barbara K. Olson
Melissa Vincent
Jonathan Ielpi
Deanna Galante
Patrick Sullivan
Tonyell McDae
Samantha and Lisa Egan
Jupiter Yamblen
Carlos Mario Munoz

Later, after the flyers that were captured in the photos were rained away, lists like this got compiled. A few phrases about each person, serving as a public memory.
www.september11victims.org/

Relationship Advice

From Jared's cousin's grandma:

"You know how people will tell you not to go to bed angry? That's a load of crap. You're gonna fight, get angry, get tired. You're gonna go to bed angry. The important thing is don't wake up angry."

If You Are Lucky

If you are lucky in this life
A window will appear on a battlefield between two armies

And when the soldiers look into the window
They don't see their enemies
They see themselves as children

And they stop fighting
And go home and go to sleep
When they wake up, the land is well again.


by Cameron Penny
(Cameron Penny was in 4th grade when he wrote this poem in 2001)

Kidnapped Baby Reclaimed

She has grown into a different little lady than we expected at birth. But she's ours.

And the gal's got legs! Stay tuned.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrdp1CxtwEk

Disjointed Thought Buffet

I'm back from New York. For the first time, I'm having to transition back to Santa Barbara. Usually, even after coming back from a paradisical trip to Panama, I get home and am immediately acclimated. But not today. I keep hearing or seeing things that take me back to NYC. Today it was a distant screech that sounded like a braking subway train. Earlier it was the sound of sirens headed down State Street. Having a hard time materializing back on the West Coast.

Dream image last night:
Hummingbirds inside a tree. Scores of them, sitting on branches.

Saw Lisa's pictures tonight of vultures in Guatemala City, that took the same pose as the hummingbirds in the dream.

Dream image a few nights before:
Smoking a cigar or a pipe, the kind of thing you're not supposed to inhale.

Next day Lisa says she bought a pipe in Latin America and smoked it last night.

Mental lint indeed.

Art Juxtaposes Life

Subway Train Billboard #1:

"After 9/11, we were there.
Now a lot of us are sick. More may get sick later.
But it's not too late to get help for a current or future 9/11 illness.
...Free medical care or lost wages from New York State Workers Compensation."

Subway Train Billboard next to it:

www.donatelife.org

here is new york

The quotes below (Sept. 14 post) are from photos at the New York Historical Society photographic exhibit, "here is new york: remembering 9/11."

The photos are simply exhibited, no frames, 11" x 17" hanging on string with binder clips, filling all the wall space and strung above-head across the rooms as well. The exhibit covers two large galleries of space with photographs taken by scores of photographers at or in relation to 9/11.

They show survivors, rubble from the WTC, layers of dust, writing in the dust on windows of abandoned cars, emergency workers, onlookers, blast views, planes headed into the towers, jumpers, distressed onlookers, stunned, dust-covered survivors holding their foreheads in one hand and a water bottle in the other, the international sign for grief and disbelief--the hand over the mouth, missing flyers, impromptu memorials of candles and flowers and cardboard, butcher paper, chalk on the sidewalk overflowing with sentiments, shopkeepers and volunteers feeding emergency crews, prayer stations, revenge signs reading "Wanted Dead or Alive" with a picture of Bin Laden, a humvee squeezed onto an antique, tiny downtown street, more dust, papers scattered about a church graveyard, countless tears, that clear clear 9/11 sky, nyc concrete corridors every last person facing the direction of the smoke, watching in disbelief, subway stop memorials, people staying together, strangers in each others' arms, firemen holding hands on their way into the pile, kids' drawings, sisters and fathers and migrant workers and traders missing, blood, twisted metal, mettle, post-apocalyptic organization, blue sky....

I will post more of the quotes later.

Not Worth My Tit

The overarching theme in the 9/11 interviews I've lead this week: New Yorkers see the crushing need for peace more than anyone else. War is reiterating, on foreign soil, the death, destruction, fear and anguish that knocked the wind out of our nation on that day.

The more life we extinguish, the less ground we gain. The more death we espouse, the less distance we travel in healing our grief and, in so doing, the schisms of the world.

"Our grief is not a cry for war."
"We were born innosent and kind." (sic)
"One Love. People get ready."

Your Tat is not worth my Tit.

Backwards

In pajamas tired and dizzy. Traffic noise outside the first floor window.

Little cookies that come with the check.
Pasta with duck ragout
Artichoke calamari torte
Lemon Drop martini
Reading material: Life of Pi

Four camisoles
Three sweaters
Four cotton tops
One pair of jeans (vs. one jean, which would be, what, one leg of denim?)
No tax
$294.
Dept Store shopping at Zara.

Finally.
Comfort without bandaids.
After purchase of pair of shoes number !!!!FOUR!!!!
Ahh. Thank you God for sneakers.

Pickle stack art at the Old Town bar.
Lunch with NICO!
Yippee!

Farmer's market breakfast at 12:30pm.
Local grown honeycrisp apple and homemade oatmeal cookies.
Late start to the day.

Random factoid: Did you know that New Yorkers suffer 30% higher incidence of hearing loss than the rest of the country?

I said, DID YOU KNOW THAT NEW YORKERS SUFFER 30% HIGHER INCIDENCE OF HEARING LOSS THAN THE REST OF THE COUNTRY??

If You Come a Knockin'

Meet Sxip.

We love Sxip. LOVE SXIP.

YouTube Sxip Shirey.
Play this while you read. Do it now. You'll get a prize.

Sxip makes music.
Sxip tells stories.
All of which make you want to puke up your lunch for the sake of love.
Gut wrenching getting it everything that ever made sense and didn't love.
Sxip knows the art of olive oil.
Sxip is a circus composer.
When we met, Sxip shared a subterranean West Village apartment, shitting you not, the size of three small broom closets.
His roommate made intricate mechanical wings that crowded the place and they subleased the apt from a legendary drag queen who tricycled through Greenwich Village on inspired serenades.
Sxip was my FAVORITE first date ever.
It was a blind date of sorts, and we set out to find each other in the crowds of Bleecker Street. He started at the tea seller's and I started at the Italian pastry shop, and we were to find each other in the middle, I with my pink pastry box and he holding a tea pot.
Our first date was so good, and historical second dates so dismal, that instead of proposing a doomed second date, Sxip proposed another first. That was the second best first date ever.
Sxip is as bosom buddy as Tom Hanks and as musical master as Tom Waits. I know. You pause at that one. But just listen a while.
Listen to the velour of his voice and the flight of his stories, the lift of his love for the worlds he spins and the spaces where they land.
We love Sxip.

Show me the money and the milk and the honey.

9.11.07

S-H-A-I

A New York day is comprised of New York Minutes. Here are a few from today.

ACT I



I got FOUR HUGS!! Totally made my day.


ACT II

I met a guy named Shai. S-H-A-I, he said. I noticed him in Union Square, in his fine leather shoes and dress pants narrow enough at the ankle to make him look foreign. He had on a pressed white shirt and navy blues. Investment probably.

Now I have smudges on my glasses and I'm dizzy from the wine. Did I mention he is my type? Tall. Yep. Dark. Yep. Well groomed. Yuh-huh.

Shai was not shy. "Shai" means "present" or "gift" in Hebrew. And he meant to give me one. He kissed me at the wine bar. And if I allowed myself to think back to 20 minutes earlier, on a terraced step at Union Square, when, as we left, I thought, "Huh, walked up. Exchanged pleasantries. Laughed. And left the spot a generous 7 minutes later...looks like a lady-market up here and he just picked his produce," maybe I wouldn't have been surprised by that kiss. Nor by the suggestion we spend the two hours before my next interview at the W Hotel on the corner.


ACT III

I'm underground on my way to the interview. Did I mention how humid and hot it is? I'm sweating like I'm bleeding out my pores.The subway drummer helps ease my mood.

Not so small miracles, the train is air conditioned. A middle-aged white man (MAWM) in Gap jeans, fashionable Tee, wire rimmed glasses and headphones...is rapping.

Across the aisle, impeccably timed, a kid's arm is being tickled by a stranger's open newspaper. He responds.

MAWM: "Gonna kiss this bitch. Gonna hit this bitch."

KID: "That makes me itch."

Addicted

PEMA: He's such a handsome guy. And he's happy to see you, too.

REGINA: I know... the dog has a hard on 24/7!

PEMA: Maybe he was a Viagra puppy.

Day One

I'm in New York.
I used to live here.
9/11/01 was my second day of grad school.
I watched flames and smoke from a street corner near class.
Many students left soon after.
I didn't have an apartment yet.
But I stayed, realizing that I had prepared for this day so thoroughly that I sent one set of storage boxes to my parents in the Midwest, and the other to Suzy in California: In case I died, I didn't want my parents to have to wrap their heads around the evidence of a life lived creatively.
Being here was a dream realized.
There was no better place for me to be in the world.
Where would I go?
Eventually, the grad-school-in-NYC part of my life ended.
I've been back lots of times.
But I'm nervous now.
Because it's the first time since I lived here that I've allowed myself to feel the trauma of the events.
Don't act surprised. I'm a late bloomer.
And I had an iron cage around a tiny heart.
Since nearly losing it--and by losing it I mean comparing myself to homeless folks on the street and finding that maybe the only thing that separated us was charity--I started a slow return.
This visit is part of that return.

Organic

I walk into the Soj today to pick up lunch, and Leo the barrista's long dreadlocks are all shaved off!

PEMA: Your head looks great!

LEO: Thanks. ...My mom made it.

PEMA: She did??

LEO: Yeah.

PEMA: ...Oh... like... a long time ago.

LEO: Yeah.

Ann Gram

TANIA: Pema, do you know the Enneagram?

PEMA: Not intimately. More...down the couch.

Ex-hilarating

I met Allen on Match.com. Doofy pic for what turned out to be such a handsome guy, but his ad was funny and original. Got me engaged. Said something like "Choose your meta-ad," and he had five small ads in one, all clever and appealing...little bitta intellectual, whole lotta dork.

So last weekend, it's 2am, I can't sleep. I'm cruising Craigslist and I see "Choose the ad you like best - 34." I think, "Don't look at it Pema, it'll piss you off," when I realize, wait, I'm looking at the "Women Seeking Men" section. His ad wouldn't be here. So I look at it. Dude, it IS his ad, copied and pasted by a woman, and filled in to match her specifics. What are the chances of that?? Of me seeing that?

I did what any self-respecting dumpee would do. Assumed Allen's identity and wrote to her fawning over the fate of us meeting this way. We're meeting next weekend.

Just kidding. I did forward the ad to Allen, though.

Yes, I realize I may be an instrument in their fate.

Stupid Fuckers

Buttons and Biscuit are a lesbian couple I know trying to get pregnant. I know, you thought they were a jazz duo or a plantation lullaby. Nope. Just a couple trying to bake a bun.

They do run in accomplished circles, however. And they've been getting a few calls lately from straight friends that have turned up pregnant. Oopsy daisy style.

Buttons has her cycle down to a personal science. She can feel it when her womb so much as looks sideways at a pickle jar. So on her off days, Buttons is pretty pissed that her Ivy League astrophysicist type girlfriends can launch a rocket but can't for the life of them figure out how they got pregnant.

My Friends

…on the other hand, are CHATTY. Or in Tania’s case, chirpy.

In a heated discussion over the best seller, EAT PRAY LOVE (because it was 90 degrees in the house today), Ivonne defended in detail her disdain for the author’s “chirpy” and self-absorbed voice on topics as weighty as loneliness, depression and spirituality.

Tania, who loves this book, and whose tireless joy shames even the birds outside our windows, must retort.

TANIA: I don’t know how you stand ME being so chirpy.

IVONNE: You’re both chirpy AND substantive. A lot of people only want the chirpy.

My Lovers

Spring, 2002. Kira and I are walking down the street in NYC after voice class. I’m a little loopy and Kira’s asking why.

It’s because three days ago, this crush I harbored since day one of grad school suddenly stopped torturing me from afar, and started inviting me to her bed (i.e., torturing me in closer proximity).

See, I go for the dark, broody, withholding types. Chatty and open as I like to be, their reserve signals intensity, mystery, depth. Forget the guesswork I have to do, wondering where I fit in, how they feel, what they think of me…that’s like a dance and who doesn’t like a good dance? I’m three days into the thrall, all crickly and crackly in the electricity of it, ooey and lightheaded and deep into the secrecy…did I mention this is a secret? Too dazed by the sharp smack of her beauty to note that her less-than-forthcoming nature is working against me rather than for me.

But Kira’s not standing with me in the lobotomy line:

“Pema, just because she’s quiet doesn’t mean she’s mysterious. It could be she has nothing to say.”

Dinner

Dessert

Mawwiage

GAYNES:
Do you think if the vows were
“For as long as we both can stand
each other” people’d have a better
go at it?


From "Talking Dogs"
A play I'm writing

Terminator

Yes, Pema, It's the Purse.

I talked to Allen tonight. We met on the Mission steps at sunset and did some post mortem recon.

It should have been over a week ago, when I got “the speech.” But it wasn’t. I got drop-kicked in the time it took us to walk one block and back. Not exactly satisfying.

Since then, I’ve made large crocks of brandied sangria, and sangria popsicles. I ate whatever I could put in my mouth, and in between, tried to keep feeling. I’ve felt sad, felt good, made some sense of it. But on my own.

And now, if I may bestow a warning against making sense of break-up on one’s own…I submit the list I began to obsess over:

“What turned him?”

Was it my purse? (Can you believe this? Top of the list.)
Is it my breasts? They’re so floppy these days.
My clothes? Too girly.
Or, maybe I’m too sporty.
I’m not intellectual enough. (hah)
Not traveled enough?
Maybe he wants someone bold enough to get him talking.
Or more vulnerable.
Boy, those crows feet sure are prominent.
He wants a geek girl, a scientist like him.
Prim. Exciting. Smart.
That’s not me.
Not the prim part anyway.

Ditch. Cancel. Shut the Hell UP. Well, was it my purse?? Shut up!! Keep feeling.

So I keep feeling and suggest closure would be nice. Then once the plans are made, wonder which part of hearing Allen state all the reasons he dumped me would be fun, useful.

It turns out to be useful after all. We talk. I get to tell him I am mad. Get to tell him how much fun I had. Get to hear him open up and share things he didn't share while we were dating. It is all very enlightened of us, and I am thankful for having followed my instinct, and challenging myself to feel until the very end...instead of chalking up his absence to some dumb guy-move.

And though he didn't confirm or deny, I will be getting a new purse by month-end.

At Home at the End of the Sea

At the end of a 2 1/2 month Semester at Sea voyage with 400 new friends, words of wisdom from Malcolm Brickhouse, age 5:

"Daddy, why, oh why, oh why, oh why did we have to move to this stupid house from our boat?"

Personal Dialect

My step-mom is excitable. Set on normal, her facial expression resides somewhere between placid and steely, depending on the quality of light and purity of your soul.

In my family, she got the speed. Mostly in her brain. Mom's got maybe 27 channels on in there, all moving at lightning speed, and her mouth, God bless us all, couldn't keep up if she were a blue-ribbon speed-talker.

My dad loves this. Wholly entertained, he waits like a dog with a biscuit on his snout, for her newly rendered language, the verbal mishaps between her inside world and outside. He plants practical jokes to catch the 27 channels off guard and to hear her squeal, which is more a squawk as if a bird of prey itself is escaping for dear life from her throat, "Jiiiiimmm!!!!"

Sometimes, on a really really good day, a delicious and God-sent two-biscuit day, she'll encounter her excitability without my dad's help at all, and he'll be right there to hear it.

His recent favorite, they're driving down a Missouri highway and they see a car that has just spun out and rolled. In the middle of exhausting green expanse, this is pretty exciting for a passenger who has heretofore had fairly little to set her brain upon. Her wind-up is zero to 60 in .5 seconds; the bird of prey bursts out.

"Jim! Jim loook!! That car, it's all up under its overneath!!"

Food Chain

Amanda:

"Jaden Billings, stop trying to eat your sister!!"

We Love Love

Michelle on anticipation...

"Ahh! I was married 17 years! I can't WAIT until my next divorce!"

"The Speech"

Once, I had my heart set on an apartment to rent. I couldn’t imagine a better place for me, in a hundred different ways. I was crushed when I didn’t get it. Till a week later when I found a place that was 10 times better than I'd even imagined. Whenever I get “the speech” and it takes me by surprise, I think of that apartment. There's someone out there for me even better than I have imagined.

I’m putting in my order now for the next good fortune.

Allen’s FUN, friends & romance, Hocoy's head, Dwight's zing, Gary’s connect, Lara’s ambition, Chela’s diligence, Gina’s devotion, Christophe’s emotional intellect, Duane's generosity, Jane’s JOY, and Rian’s spiritual depth.

C’mon, a little Frankenstein mojo never hurt nobody.

Day in the Life

Morning.
So I’m dating again. Or maybe I should say I’m still dating. For anyone not paying attention—or, uh, not inside my head till now—I’ve been dating for, oh, let’s say NINE YEARS. Nine years with no cigar. Go ahead, throw me on the commitment-phobe line-up and trot out your analyses. There MAY have been several “the one” potentials in those years, but it never turned out that my “the one” thought I was his “the one” too, or hers as the case may have been.

Afternoon.
The funny thing about this post is that it started out on a high note, this morning, me giddy from Matt’s congratulations for my dating good fortune—finally! My roommate for two years, I endured Matt’s sex-with-loud-girlfriends in the next room while he endured the string of overly clingy men that found me one after the next. I mean, extraordinary cling. Fire blanket cling. I spent a lot of time giving the “I-don’t-see-the-long-term” speech as a result.

Imagine Matt’s empathetic thrill for the new, improved, anti-cling of Allen! Allen is like dryer-sheets for the love life. Allen makes you feel fresh and soft, AND static-free! We have a ridiculous fun date, he asks me out again, we live our lives in between, then go out and have another ridiculous fun night. Just last week we’re bolting into the ocean, moonlit and naked and so geared up on the rush of our spontaneity that the slippery, salty kisses take on breathless surprise.

Evening.
Tick tock the merry clock goes tick tock-ing all day.
Frick frock the flippin flop has launched me on my way.

Yep. By 3:30 today my stomach starts twisting like a sail in a storm from these few words: “Are you free this afternoon to talk?”

By 4:00, I’m free as no-static, free as no-cling, free as a Bounce sheet left in a Laundromat dryer.

The speech. It’s like currency. I spend it this time, you spend it next. And so on.

A la Rainman

Matt, on desire...

"Definitely. Definitely not dating. Definitely not dating my boss."

Thunder God

Jackie, on returning from Africa...

"Yes I SHOULD pray to the thunder god so I have more thunder in my life!"

Naked Thievery

I'm feeding my friends' cat. They live up the hill from me. But, damn, I left the key inside their house last night!! I realize this upon arriving this morning.

Maybe the back door is unlocked? No, but a back window is open, on this dirty, ashy, smoke-over-the-sun morning. (We're getting blanketed from the fire in the mountains.) I'm girlie to the hilt today in my work dress and heels, jewelery. What's a girl to do?? The cat is yowling in the background over an empty bowl. Her owners are out of town.

So I remove the screen, remove my dress, and wriggle into the house head first in my half-slip and heels...the media release tumbling in my head, "Beware the Half Naked Burglar."

Public Service

...Guide Dogs for the Stupid

That Smell

"Why does it smell like an eternal fart?"

...on sniffing another blast of the sewage smell that's been roving around Santa Barbara all summer.



08/20/07