Alecto's Ophelia

Because yesterday was Friday

I have plenty better to do than update The Refrigerator Door cover photo but because yesterday was Friday and I'm all about controlling the when and how much of the self-prescribed (I think?) syrup of ipecac, it's 4:01 PM on Saturday and I don't have my brain back yet.

If I take a nap maybe I'll find my way to some sort of productive. I realize people need to rest, I really do. But I also need to start moving again. With a purpose. 

Last night I looked around my living room and dining room (which is as far as I can see without actually getting up and moving) and made an inventory of what I want to come (in sort of an order), what I might like to come if there's room, and what is absolutely not coming. That was pretty easy.

Then I did the bedrooms in my head. Also. Pretty easy. Then the kitchen. Well, that's already half purged. Won't take much to keep going. Then I got to downstairs and looked around. There's not much left downstairs except that desk I got for Portnoy which I'd like to burn, but won't; the old table Pat's dad made from a piece of butcher block and some industrial table legs bolted on at an odd angle and the damn thing weighs maybe a buck fifty, and, oh hell. All those books. Shit. 

I know.

When you're right, you're right. I know. 

Thinking about the dishes I own that I've been collecting and replacing since Elizabeth was small. Some need to be replaced because Elizabeth killed five of them in rapid succession but I don't want to spend money like that because at some point very soon it just isn't going to be an option and then what? Suddenly I have twelve cups, four plates, nine cereal bowls, four soup bowls, and two sandwich plates? Then what? Mix it with Fiestaware? The only way this stuff is going to survive is if I am literally the only person living in this house. Why my children seem to be genetically predisposed to dropping this shit on the tile floor is beyond me but the truth is, they are, and they show no signs of outgrowing it. And I have no intention of shaming them out of it either. 

We could have a Simon Pearce Plate Smashing Party at the Friday Feeest week after next, I suppose. And be done with it.

I AM going to be one of those mothers.

Here, Pumpkin, take this with you. It was great-great-great-great-great-grandma Cora's sock warmer and it will look perfect hanging on the wall under your guitar collection. What? You don't think it will fit? Of course it will. Just move the mandolin a little to the right and give everything a two inch scooch up.

What? Of course I've never been in your apartment. I haven't been stalking you. I've seen pictures, that's all. What pictures? Oh, I don't know, Lucia probably. No. Really! I have not once set foot in your apartment ok just the one time I'm sorry sweetie it will never happen again here take the damn sock warmer you NEED IT! 

Oh. You don't have a fireplace? Well, just warm it in the oven first, and then put it back on the wall for the socks. 

Ah, crap. And that other thing. Elizabeth sends a text which causes me to schedule a thirty minute call to find out what the hell is going on because when this statement comes out of a freshman student's mouth your ears had damn well better perk up:

Mom, Julia doesn't want to come back next semester.

OK.

Mom. Julia doesn't want to come back.

OK. I understand. Julia has been having a really hard time and she may need to take a break.

Mom. If Julia doesn't come back to the dorm, I don't want to live here either.

Oh. 

Yes. Oh.

So we should talk, right?

Yes, Mom, we should talk because I only have two days to opt out of housing for next semester.

OK, I have two thirty minute openings at 2 and 3:30, do either of those work for you? Or I can do right now.

I'll take 2 for $600, Trebeck.

You got it, Buckfutter. 

It's a post of it's own and the kid is perfectly fine. More than perfectly fine. The kid is awesome. The kid just needed to think some things through out loud which I guess is a way of giving herself permission and didn't seem the least bit surprised to find her mother sitting right next to her on the bus. So we're doing a campus tour of a NYC school she had in her back pocket which had never been an active option because for some reason she discounted anything other than the full move in route for four years. This is a commuters town. She commuted to 56th and 10th for nearly the entire summer a few years ago. This is another 12 blocks up. Can't remember what street, really doesn't matter for this conversation. Subway lines are subway lines. When the truth came out it was because THAT school was held up to light against Barnard and fell a bit short. 

What?! 

Yeah, I know. Stupid.

Well, I wouldn't say stupid, I'd say, um, illogical. 

No. Stupid. I knew I was breathing the, what do you call it? The Rare Air. Where the altitude is so high you don't get enough oxygen so people have a tendency to make poor choices? 

Well, that's not exactly what I said, you extrapolated stupid by yourself but I can work with that, in the context of WHS and how we make higher education choices.

So I'm pulling it back out again. 

That's good because if you look up New York schools and their rankings based on a bunch of factors you'll probably be surprised on where those two fall on the scale of 1 to 100. 

Are they near the top?

Yup, they are near the top.

How close?

Not too shabby.

Are they close to each other?

Closer than you might imagine.

But the cost, you can't even compare it.

No shit.

It's hard to get in, do you think they'll take me?

Elizabeth, we had this conversation last year. What is your GPA and what are your SAT scores and what will your GPA be coming out of first semester if you had to guess?

Oh.

So, I don't know but based on what I do know, I would guess it depends on how they feel about transfers and you'll have to tell them why. And you'll have to wait until next year, you know that, right?

Of course. I have to complete an 18 credit course load to make up for the 12 credit first semester or they aren't even going to want to look at me. It's 30 or nothing.

Glad you know that. 

Jeeze, Mom.

Sorry. I should have known better. So you're going to carry 18 credits as a commuter?

Yup.

OK. 

Don't you think I can?

Oh, I know you can. Are you going to miss the parties?

Not really. I can still go.

You can't drink and drive.

Mom. I have options.

I'm an idiot. Yes. You do have options. 

So, yeah, that's not a post up there; that's a conversation about why I'm going to Hunter tomorrow. The post which may or may not get written (I hope so) is about what happened in just two months, ten weeks at SUNY P, which is a perfectly fine art school. There isn't a thing wrong with it although she says:

You know what they say, that thing about 'Think Wide Open'?

Yeah?

They're full of shit. False Fucking Advertising. 

Yeah, I kind of got that. I think that might be the art community though and maybe they mean think wide open within your own community and maybe we heard what we wanted to hear.

Nope. Sorry, they aren't getting off that easy.

Are you mad?

No. I'm just saying. That's all.

OK. So you need to go to a place that supports who you want to be as opposed to going to a place where you can immerse and observe?

Yep. 

Are you still willing to immerse and observe?

Of course. It's just that I have to actually be able to get work done. 

Gotcha. 

1419

What color is your fighter plane (and the seatbelt)?

Catalyst. 

Do you ever have that dream? You know the one where you're the fighter pilot and you've gone through all 9 gazillion points on your checklist and you're in your seat with your oxygen mask on (yup, that sort of plane) and you would be hearing the engines whine except these planes don't do that sort of thing before they propel themselves toward the sound barrier but in YOUR head you still hear turbines just before lockdown and in the dream you realize you don't have your seatbelt on...

Seatbelt.

Stay with me. It's a dream.

And you start frantically reaching around on the left side by the door

(Door?) 

Trying to grab the damn thing and pull it over your lap and get it clipped because the last thing you want is a 

CONCUSSION 

(a g force concussion from the front of your head meeting the dashboard of your plane while you're plastered like a bug to the back of your seat. stay with me. it's a dream)

before you've had a chance to sort yourself out. 

You know the dream, right? 

Well, I know the dream. I'm a frequent flyer. I made Captain in September, 2016. I've been logging miles since...

I was trying to calculate that in my head on the way home from Basking Ridge last night while having what I really wanted to be a really short conversation with my brother which was almost half the ride home because 

1. I freaked him out. That right there is really all I need to bullet out. I freaked him out. but. there's more.
2. My brother is a lot like my dad and also in some ways my mom, as it turns out and therefore by virtue of pointing out those two things AN AWFUL LOT LIKE ME. Crap. 
   1. For the uninitiated, this means that when we decide we need to have information for whatever reason, it is very hard to let a conversation come to a pause until we feel like we have enough information to feel - fill in any blank to fit the situation but the adjective you pick will mean control no matter how you slice it. Don't judge. Fear is human.
   2. This also means we go temporarily deaf in the process so that the words: Jack. I can't. I can't keep going. Seriously, I'm going to throw up on the steering wheel and I cannot pull over on 287 in Westchester during rush hour. 
3. I kept feeding him information when really I should have said: Jack. I can't. No, I can't. No, really. I have to stop. I cannot handle one more sentence or it will be a car accident or vomit all over my feet or both. Earlier. Much earlier. I am not immune to my own boundary busting behavior. Especially when I've done something I can't actually remember having done since I was 22 and the circumstances were a little bit different and if I don't quite count that then I have a problem.

I can't seem to get my therapist pointed in the right direction. My intention had been to go in there on Friday with a list and an agenda and if he brought up my need to be in control again in a way which sounded like disapproval then we were going to have a brief, but defining conversation about patient advocacy and if that turned into a conversation about how much I wanted 'him' in the room, he'd have exactly 45 seconds to tell me if he wanted to listen to what I was looking for and then come up with a treatment plan or would he like to pass.

That was my plan.

That was my plan until the Job Ninja arrived in my inbox on Monday at 1:28 and I realized I had to move. Now. I had to move Now. No more dicking around. I know exactly what the problem is. I can see the wall. I can see that it's higher than I can climb and I can see that I can't dig through it. The underlying or root cause of the wall is completely irrelevant. Know why? Because at this point knowing the reasons or causes changes nothing and I have to get over or through that wall. NOW.

I have done these wall exercises before. I am a smart rat and I always win but I am never me when I'm playing. I am a leader of one sort or another when I'm playing and it is never personal. I did my first wall exercise when I was 13 and it was almost too easy. We all got it immediately. Eighteen years later, same wall exercise and I remembered how to get over but I had to wait patiently for ten other adults to rehash their own stuff before we could get there. Or I could have bullied them into it but I wasn't feeling it. Still, not personal. 

My own walls have always been my own walls. This is what I was trying to tell Jack while I was crossing the Tappanzee Bridge at 70mph on Monday evening. There is only me, nobody else and I am, so, so scared and little by little the things which were flight or fright have turned to stone and I am in trouble and I don't want to die.

Jack. I don't know how to ask for help because I can't remember a time when I wasn't on my own.

Pause.

Jack. I'm thinking about this. I'm thinking about when I was twelve and I was definitely alone. I don't want to think back any further then that, OK? 

The problem with the therapist, I'm noticing, is when we do touch on things that were truly, what's the word Jack uses, it makes me laugh, the word is preposterous, things that sound preposterous because who would ever do such a thing? Well, out of your context (you are anyone), no one would do such a thing, but in MY context, such a thing was a regular occurrence. I am beginning to understand he is taking 50% of what comes out of my mouth with a bucket of salt. THAT is a problem. 

No, no, listen, no. Stop. No. Listen. OK. Fine. Yes, I understand that is unbelievable for you to hear. Do you want me to get you a witness? Would that help you because this is not helping me. 

The conversation was about the scarcity of food on the drop zone when Jack and I were small. These are things I'm remembering in batches, like gifts that come individually wrapped inside large UPS boxes on the front porch.

There was a box of velveeta and a jar of miracle whip and a knife and a loaf of white bread. OK. Then what? Cut off thick chunks of that orange stuff because the butter knife can't make them thin and put them on the bread with miracle whip. Eat the sandwich. When is that food in the car. Some weekends. All weekends? No. What happens when it isn't in the car? I don't want to look at that right now. No. Later. Not now. What happens at dinner. Ah, Christ. Maybe some skydiver has pizza. I don't want to think about this. Beer nuts. I love beer nuts. 

This sort of thing can leave one kid perfectly intact and another on the precipice of shredded. I think it might have something to do with birth order, overall responsibility, and maybe a lot of stuff that came after as well. 

I remember that I helped him occasionally when he was young. I don't think he needed a lot but I don't think I thought twice about giving him anything he ever did need. Ever. And I don't think I wanted it back. I don't know if it was easy or hard for him to ask for help but I hope it was easy. It was easy to give. And then there came a time when he was stable and he had money and a regular-ish income and lived in an actual apartment with a job that didn't involve skydiving or climbing big rocks or ice and he said:

Alecto, tell me when you need something because now I can help you.

And this knocks the freaking air out of me.

He could not help me. The best he could do was help my kids. I wasn't a space for being helped.

It has nothing to do with pride. I'll tell you why. 

I said to him, last night, Jack, I don't know how to ask for help. It isn't the words, I don't know what to do. I can hardly breathe. But I called you. I called you and left a message and you called me back and I'm telling you things I haven't been able to tell anyone in more than six words at once.

When I went to bed last night I stood in front of my mirror. You do this, right?

You stand in front of a mirror and stare yourself down? Oh, you must. It is a good thing to do. 

It didn't take very long because everything was up at the surface. 

I can't ask for help because somewhere at some time, somehow, I don't how many times, maybe it only took once, but I know I was pretty young. Somewhere, somehow, I reached out my hand and I was dropped off a cliff. 

Now, there are a number of times in my life that I've been dropped off cliffs; the most recent and memorable being the departure of Mr. Bennett who is going to make a reappearance shortly. (SEATBELT!) Mr. Bennett, bless his heart, did not mean to drop me off a cliff. Mr. Bennett is a lousy communicator and that's what comes of being a lousy communicator. You have to use words, actual, literal, specific words that can only mean one thing when you're going to do something quite so drastic as walk out of a marriage or leave a job or not see children anymore (now I'm just grabbing at stuff). You can't imply shit because you're indirect by nature. I didn't just give him a buy; I gave him an explanation. I'm also pretty sure that Mr. Bennett's exit would not have been life threatening without whatever history I can't quite see through the murk. 

I mean, let's look at this logically. The departure of a spouse for any reason should not be cause for death. Right? And I don't mean death by suicide either. I literally didn't think I was going to make it until about April or May. Death would have looked like me walking into traffic in Stamford on a Monday morning because I was two inches from catatonic and finally slipped in all the way. I spent that many months fighting it. Christ, that was scary. 

If I let go of this cliff edge I'm hanging onto long enough to reach for that hand, then I am going to slip and fall unless that hand means it. 

Also. Until Sunday night, just before the Job Ninja brought that lovely weapon down, for the life of me I could NOT figure out who the hell I would call. I mean seriously, who? I'm alone. Right?

Oh. 

So. That is how bad it is. I have a brother. I have brother who really wants to be a brother. He's a good brother. See the picture? I'm glad you do because it took me until just now.

I'm flying to Colorado for a couple of days before Thanksgiving which is the week between jobs which I need to breathe. I need to spend face time because this isn't something I can do on the phone and also because he needs to actually know where I am. 

I really only meant to leave the Ninja and go on my way. 

1998

 

The Virtual Family Room

It was a late night mistake. I was trying to set up a new Facebook group message and clicked group and thought, what the hell, why not. It's a lot easier to set up a group today then it was back in 2009 which is the last time I did this for Bikram Norwalk which was an unholy mess. What I thought would take ten minutes took days. 

I did this because the first group chat was set up the day I left Facebook for a padded room which contains all of ten or eleven live bodies. The fact of the padded room is a post of its own. I may never come back or I may come back and do a clean freaking sweep or update my security settings so egregiously I might as well be invisible. 

So - the first messenger group was labeled O'FEMA and I'd have to scroll all the way back to the beginning to pick up on the original pun but it wasn't meant to last. I needed an inclusive family chat which was not associated with panic or emergency. I took the original Princess Sparkle Pony which has existed since the dawn of messenger time between me, Lucia, and Mike and made something called Sparkle Pony Extension. I made it private. I made it unsearchable. I invited exactly six people and I'll throw my currently defunct self in there when and if I wake it up.

I seeded a few posts and I waited.

Nothing.

WTH, peeps. 

I made an announcement. 

I got an unexpected result. You all do know that's not Lucia, right? 

Which resulted in the thirty minute sort of conversation that's been happening over at the Sparkle Pony site for years. 

Which is probably how this finally happened.

And I wouldn't publish the conversation string that came out of this post for anything because nobody but my family could possibly digest, much less accept that sort of, uh, never mind.

It's how we read each other, the way we follow the paths and are willing or able to make the logical or illogical or unreasonable or ridiculous leaps from a photograph of her day to a path which eventually went off the board and into a mother/daughter foray into the world of Hansen's Disease. We are both excellent researchers and analysts and we make a tremendous team. This is healing and when one of us can let the other lead and the other recognizes that she's leading and maybe even the one doing the teaching, well this is a very good thing. One of us ought to continue her medical education just one year more and straight into residency but I'm keeping my trap shut. 

And finally this morning I published a 59 page report, not an article, a REPORT, to Congress about domestic terrorism. With commentary about why it should be read (not just because of the content). If I did that on my 642 page site I'd be burned at the stake. By both sides. In under 12 hours and nobody would get past the title page. OK, maybe 2% of my viewing base would get halfway through the TOC before they got defensive, pissed as hell, triggered into the stratosphere and started firing but nobody would actually read it. I posted.  

Domestic Terrorism: An Overview  

It's super cool. If you're afraid to click the link (59 pages of actual research IS daunting), here is the title page so you can be horrified. I think it's only fair to put this here because on FB, you generally get a thumbprint at which to get riled up and therefore choose to have a reaction without reading. 

In the event that you'd like to be part of the 2% (here's our chance), you may view the TOC for free (without the price of following the link which is NOT subversive if it was actually submitted to Congress just over a year ago).

You can see how this might be a little incendiary on both sides. 

Sometime in the process (in the last 24 hours) I did three things. I updated the cover photo which involved taking prior posts and putting refrigerator magnets around them (see first photo), renamed the group 'The Refrigerator Door' and updated the group's description which started out as a blathering explanation for a bit of a blunder but why don't you all come in anyway.

So this is it:

We're coming along. I've noticed that Elizabeth, who for years now has bemoaned her lock out from the Princess Sparkle Pony chat, has no freaking idea how to interact in this format. None whatsoever. She is a lurker. Her FB account has been just about dormant since its inception because her strategy has been 'be bulletproof'. Her interaction has been limited to snapchat which is limited to photographs of the landscape for the most part.

I poke her a bit and she dips her toe in which bites me in the ass and I laugh because this is how we are.

845

Full of light

One of the many benefits of attending an art school as an anthro major: (you should see the rest of them). Mom threw it in Affinity and dragged some light across the back, at least enough to see her face. I should not fuck with a photographer's raw image but I had a hard day and promised not to put it anywhere but here and to credit the anonymous photographer's anonymous name. 

Photography by Anonymous at Anonymous and damn, she's good (no joke). 

There are some tremendous photographs of my daughter doing nothing except being caught in the act of transition or truth, maybe. And there are those photographs you see of women who are so beautiful they terrify you. You never see them in real life or if you do, you edge away down the bar a few seats because they are always So. Damn. Tall. And how can anyone's hair and makeup be THAT perfect? Mostly you don't see them because they aren't real. Well they are, but the photograph is what you're used to seeing and then when you see the model, the model believes she looks like that so she walks and talks 

This sort of is a metaphor, or it could be, but right now I actually am talking about a couple of photographs.

She was flicking by them too fast because they weren't interesting. 

Pause.

Above is interesting. That's her favorite, almost. It was about the light. Because she was entirely in silhouette and there was no lighting, no streetlight, just the stillness and the aperture, she is fascinated with the magic and herself appearing out of the dark, just a few lines at first and then at her mothers hand ---- whoosh! 

Where did that come from?!

That is information stored in the digital image. I am just asking it to come forward.

But I thought it was a black and white image.

It is not. If it was a black and white image, there would be no color to pull forward. I could bring in light by increasing exposure and working with highlights and shadow, but no color. I once tried to technicolor a black and white image by copying the original photo and making layers. Then I tried to saturate each layer with red, green, and blue, and run the process but it doesn't work that way. I can color a black and white photograph but I cannot technicolor what isn't there and I cannot adjust or pull forward color that isn't there.

So this isn't black and white?

Nope. It's just really dark.

The photographs she flicked right by I made her flick right back.

Who is that?

Mom. That's me.

No shit. Who did your makeup?

I did my makeup. That's my normal makeup.

No it's not. You don't wear makeup like that.

OK, not that much but I'm not really wearing that much. 

Elizabeth, that's how you wanted to look when we left the Mac studio in Orlando, isn't it?

Yep. 

So what happened?

Two years, better product, me, lighting, and her.

Her? 

That's the camera, Mom.

No it's not.

Yes it is.

What's going on with your hair? You look like you just got rolled. Are you

Mom. No. I am not I did not and we messed it up like this (messes up my hair with clip still in place ouch)

She looked like... uh... shit. 

I know what you're thinking, she said it too. I need to be about nine inches taller. And I shouldn't have these (squeezes boobs together); they're not marketable.

Not marketable. Honey, shut me the hell up, I'm an objectifying momma and I still have some undoing to be done. 

Mom.

What?

I'm sorry.

For what?

That was awful.

I know. But why? Why was it awful?

I don't know.

So it's not just me?

No. It's not just you.

Was it everybody?

No. 

I don't get it.

She had her perturbed face on.

Don't lie to me, Elizabeth. Don't give up your sister either, but don't lie to me. Whatever's going on over there, it's not good. Nobody looks like that just because they're tired or overworked or even that their grandfather is dying. Nobody looks like that for those reasons. You know, we dissociate in this family just fine and when we do THAT shit everything just rolls along like greased pig shit.

Greased pig shit?

.....

Greased pig shit. Everything just rolls along. 

She looks like she's regressed to about 15 and her husband is busting his ass to compensate. I have no idea what to do either. This is completely uncharted; I have no map other then, do nothing. 

Do nothing is what we always do. Every time I said something about that tonight it's like she slumped deeper into her seat but she showed up like that. I'm not responsible for this and I'm not going to do nothing so we can all stay in our safe little bubbles which, by the way, are not safe at all.

....

I gave them envelopes at the table which is why we were out and not in because I spent the afternoon working on the art, not making dinner. I decided that was more important. I had a photograph I cleaned up and on top of the photograph I put the text about the parent epiphany and on the bottom I put the text about the child epiphany. 

And on the back I wrote enough of the lyrics to the songs that belong to each of them to be recognizable. They know what they are. They are songs that were covered by Suzanne Vega and the way she sang them, they roll right into each other as if they are the same. The Dedicated Album was released in April of 1991 and I was five months pregnant, maybe six by the time I got my hands on it and listened to Vega's China Doll roll into Cassidy, hearing them both as something else entirely and touching my wiggly girl (I always knew), I sang China Doll and Cassidy to my little guy who had a face wide open like Elizabeth and those two were bound by that one piece of music that is technically two songs.

For the record, China Doll was written about suicide. That is not what I hear. 

For the record, I have no memory of Lucia's face ever being wide open. Maybe if I keep digging I'll find it back there somewhere.

....

Oddly enough, both of them took the envelopes and slipped them under the table. I was and am still astonished. I picked Mike's up off the table and handed it to him as we were leaving. I don't actually know if he'd really forgotten it. I've decided that he had not.

I do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will never hear of it again. Ever.

Me:  But what does that mean??!!!

Me: It doesn't mean anything until somebody tells you what it means.

Me:  Oh. Ok. 

Me:  You could ask.

Me: Ask who?

Me: Ask them.

Me: .....

Me: You could.

Me: Will you shut up if I agree with you that yes, I could?

Me: Yes. I'll shut up.

Me: OK, Yes, I could. I could ask them.

Me: And...

Me: No! Shut up!

Me: OK. Shutting up.

....

I'm getting REALLY good with this inexpensive little tool I found when I refused to pay leasing rights for photoshop. I've been focusing on the restoration of old photos which involves the removal of a great deal of noise and restoration of detail (that goes out the door with the noise). I am particularly fond of this light and shadow business and the miracle of layers. 

The one thing I've noticed is I can't get too vested in what I'm doing. I've screwed up 90% of what I've worked on. No, make that 98%. I've gone too far and had to discard the entire thing. It's the only way I'm ever going to find out how far I can go; it's the only way I'm going to solve something I can't find a tutorial on and if I'm vested in the piece I'm working, I won't take the risk and the save as save as save as and document the shit out of every step kind of stops the creative process cold. So I don't. I just do it and hope I do better next time when I pick it up from the ground, all bare and full of scratches and missing pieces.

And in the end, when I run the light across it one last time, I am OK having spent the six hours with the photograph of me in my father's lap at the keyboard (sorry, that was a typewriter, wasn't it?) because it is exactly what I was looking for and

    if China Doll and Cassidy cannot do more than touch the outside of the envelope, then that's ok too. Because the envelope is full of light and virtually noise free.

 

1512 

Vermont 17

I have written this post six times since Monday and it comes down to this:

I have had twenty-one years (give or take) to drive over the App Gap on Vermont 17 as many times as I'd like in any season I'd like and by my reckoning I've been over it exactly twelve times and two of those times happened the first year I was there.

There's no point in writing how I feel about that. That this is take seven ought to about sum it up.

So I can tell you this instead. I can tell you that Elizabeth took the photograph because we stopped. I took it into Affinity and traded the evening sky for the light to bring back what remains of the autumn color that is just past peak in the North. I did it for Elizabeth; I'm not sure why but she received it as if she needed the light. There is another photograph taken by a couple at the pullover which is striking. No matter what I do, I cannot pull the light back into that photograph. It is taken from the same angle but pulled back quite a bit and that shouldn't present too much of a problem but I think the two humans in the middle of the shot anchor the fact of the evening. I should let it go because I need it because of her face. She is wearing her typical Elizabeth face, full of light and joy, reflecting back the world as experienced with all gazillion of her extraordinary Elizabeth senses. She is one of God's greatest creatures. We all are. Ain't that a smack in the gut of our sensibilities?

When I deposited her at the curb in front of her dorm twenty-seven hours later, that face was gone. She was grieving maybe, or just processing, overwhelmed and sad. I asked if she was glad she came and she nodded her head up and down vigorously. She loves her grandpa and she loves S and she is very happy to have made S's mother's acquaintance. Finally. I'd forgotten how long it has been since she has come east. 

It is the middle part I can't get right because there is too much or I am still struggling or I'm not sure how exposed I really am or all of the above or something I can't see. Or it is too important to not get right, this thing which is just as profound an experience as childbirth, this epiphany of mine. It is a window or a door and you are either aware that these things exist in theory or in fact or you are not. 

When I write that the epiphany is as profound as the birth of my first child, this not hyperbole. It is fact. I hope I don't lose it.

Let's see if I can manage to give you the end without the beginning and the middle. It will be a declaration without substantiating evidence. Truthfully, when you bottomline a thing, all declarations stand or don't stand on their own anyway. You don't need my backstory to hear this; what you need is your own.

I am looking at my children very differently these days. There is a thing that opened for me shortly after the birth of my first child and I wanted to scream it from the mountains but I could not make myself heard, or at least I didn't think I could. I don't know if my parents could hear me. Maybe they were too damn wounded at that point. My father seemed to balance on the edge of his own universe, sorting out what was right and what was wrong, looking for his definition of the Honorable Man he needed to be (he just needed to click those heels three times... but everybody has a journey). My mother was shattered. My brother had stars on the soles of his feet and not in such a good way. My husband was sweet and I do think he understood but his body wasn't full of hormones and he came from a family that was so normal and so stable that they had a check list of emotional things that were OK to feel and talk about and a check list of absolute unmentionables. I still hit landmines with that bunch.

I don't know where I found the book but I found it; it wasn't given to me. It was written by an older woman who must have had grandchildren by the time she wrote it and now I am thinking about her motivation. I think it was poetry and if I could find that book or remember her name I could have the whole thing again. But the message is fresh...

'...I did not know how much my parents loved me until the day you were born...'

Mic drop.

Except I was only one standing in the audience when the mic dropped.

I nearly came unhinged. It is a very hard thing to suddenly understand how much your parents love you when you are at war with them, at least in your heart. I walked around with that hole open and bloody and glad for it for a couple of years and then it started to close because I couldn't figure out how to talk about it. I think if it isn't shared it's hard to keep open.

I have listened to people tell me how much they wished they had made peace with their parents before their parents died. 

I have listened to people raise loved ones to sainthood after the fact, in compensation for making peace before the fact, leaving the pain in the ground and cycling every year or every month or week because there is no peace. I think when this happens it enters the realm, it doesn't come close - how can it? - it enters the realm of the grief a parent feels when they lose a child. That shit can never be cleaned up. 

I have listened to people tell me how hard it is to deal with their parents or their siblings and I have thought, do this before it is too late: And:

I have come to terms with the fact that I am too fragile to withstand the onslaught of my mother's fragility and what comes out of that. Therefore I do not have a relationship with my mother which essentially orphans me and makes her whatever you call a mother who has lost her child. There is no word for that. We are bound together in mutual loss. I am painfully aware of this.

I don't have the right words to properly convey the gratitude for the time I have with my father because I have time to choose differently, to be conscious. There's a voice in my head that accuses: Heather, are saying you're glad your father is dying? (yes, I did that on purpose) That is my guilt speaking. Guilt is useless. Shame is useless. Feeling bad is useless but it doesn't matter, we all feel these things because our culture supports it. I'm not going there today; I'm struggling with the juxtaposition of gratitude and shame because, as I said to my guy yesterday - I know that underneath all this great stuff that's coming to the surface, I still have to deal with the other stuff and I'm really scared. 

And that's ok.

The truth is, this makes it easier. Not the dying part, the getting to the clean part. When you take a sieve and you fill it with stuff from the creek bed and you shake it back and forth in the water, the small stuff washes away. If you leave everything as it is and you just dig without water, I think it is a lot harder, sorting through all that stuff. You have to deal with all of it when good, clean water will just wash so much little shit off by itself.

Assuming you aren't attached to the shit.

Brings me to my kids.

Everybody's stuff is valid. I have to keep reminding myself because sometimes I want to shake them and say: REALLY?! You really think your life was all that bad? Seriously? 

And that's not fair. Life is subjective. The hard part is watching the attachment to pain. We hold it for a lot of reasons but mostly we pull it up over ourselves to keep it from happening again. It really isn't that simple except when it is. And I'm not talking about the toxic waste that sits rotting in sealed memory boxes locked away in caves and attics and garages. That's a whole other thing but it still counts. It still matters. We still get to choose. I'm getting to that.

So I look at my children and I am speechless because I want to say something. It isn't for me (trust me, it would be much safer for me to just not go there), it is for them because I'm having this feeling again the way I did almost 32 years ago and I think if that woman was still alive maybe her daughter might have written it; something like this:

I did not know how fiercely I loved my father until the day I looked in his eyes and saw his comprehension of the truth of his mortality. 

When he showed me the raw vulnerability of his knowledge, asking nothing of me (and even if he had), I chose to walk through the door that allowed me to go home. 

Gratitude is a thing that wells up from the earth, spilling up and over from the deepest canyons and flooding deserts. Most of the time we turn and run for high ground. It is terrifying, those feelings. They are bigger and stronger than any of us, how can we survive that sort of shock? 

That is a justifying question of the sort that gets us where we are in the world today. And that is the truth. Pick at it some. The question we should be asking is, how can we survive without that lake in the desert? How can we have come so far so long without? I'm hearing Dana Carvey doing Church Lady in my head and you should take a break and just watch one of his videos because irreverent laughter is water right out of that lake. You know, when laugh at ourselves. Right. Back at it. 

I look at my two oldest children and I have no idea how to tell them that they can come home now or they can come home later. Or they can come home not at all. I live very close to my children. I might as well live in Maine. I understand. I also know it is very, very hard to lose a parent. It's like cutting off a limb even if you have no idea you're doing it. 

We all have two biological doorways. Some of us have a whole bunch of doorways. Some doors get slammed shut (see David's exit from Elizabeth's life). But Biological doorways, we all have two.

If they are living and they are standing open - pay attention: 

We are at choice. Always, it is we who are at choice.

Not all doors are standing open. Be grateful for the open doors. Even if you cannot go through them, be grateful that they are open. 

That is all. What? Not enough words? Eighty-one words is enough words. 

(be grateful I didn't tell you to grow the fuck up. I'm a little cranky at the moment. I didn't tell you to grow the fuck up because no one has been telling me to grow the fuck up and I think I should extend the courtesy. Now. Now that is all.)

 

1979

Tidal Rivers...what you need to know

This is the James River taken at sunset (I need to state the obvious because clearly, you would not recognize a sunset if it bit you on the nose) on October 7, 2018. This is really the only photograph Cielo and I have of our most recent romantic weekend getaway aside from some shots of the Civil War reenactment we hauled ass to Fredericksburg in order to bear witness to, well, participate in the interactive event which was the Battle of Chancellorsville on which the book The Red Badge of Courage was based, and THAT is all I'm going to give you on that. If you haven't any other history on Chancellorsville or you've become so polarized that you just do not give a shit anymore, then I've already lost you.

I come from a family of historians either by trade or by nature. I grew up watching World at War on Wednesday nights (that's one of the few times the television came out of the closet, the others being the Nixon Impeachment trials - oh dear lord - and Monday Night Football and I still only hear white noise the moment the first announcer opens his trap) which embedded several things early enough in my formative years, or maybe just at the right time to solidify how I see the world.

When I see battle, I don't really see the military as a unit, I see people. When I see battle, I don't really see side A and side B, I see people. When I see battle I feel like my life is spilling through some hole in the universe and I might die of the collective fear and pain. Oddly enough I don't often experience a sense of hopelessness or wrongness; mostly it just is, humans being humans for the reason of the year and while I don't like it, I seem to have accepted it as inevitable. When I consider this I am horrified. 

Mostly though, I am deeply sad. Boys in foxholes. I am doubled over with the memory of it and World at War was this but strategy and the movies came later. My father took me to see The Deer Hunter in 1978 and he told me I was right on the line of being too young to process or not be damaged by it at 14 but it was important enough that I see this thing and he was going to risk it. It was the right choice. I processed. I doubled over. I understood. 

Later when I fucked around because I was bored senseless and probably failed Western Civilization sophomore year (I remember watching the class and drawing one small thing in the margin of my notebook for each minute that passed), he homeschooled me that summer. It wasn't punishment. It was important, this information I shut out. So you're bored, so the teacher is boring as shit, suck it up, the information is relevant as hell. Get over yourself. This is what homeschooling looks like with a working parent who taught this stuff at University before he decided he'd like to make enough money to eat AND pay rent at the same time.

Dad:  Alecto, read this section today and when I get home I want three pages.

Alecto:  Three pages on what?

Dad:  Three pages on what you read.

Alecto:  I don't get it. Tell me what you want me to write about.

Dad:  I want you to tell me about what you read.

Alecto: (fuck me, what the hell is he talking about? What's the prompt?!!!)

Alecto: OK, Dad, but you want three pages on twelve pages so I'll do my best.

Dad:  Yes you will or you'll have to do it over.

Alecto:  OK.

I read the twelve pages. Three times. When I was done I thought about politics. To start with, Hannibal is ancient civilization, not western, right? Maybe, maybe not. I thought about that too. The pages he gave me to read did not start with: And Hannibal...blah blah blah...in the beginning... or even discuss the Saint Bernard Pass which is VERY exciting (assuming that's the pass he used). It was just twelve pages of politics. Later I got a lot more, but the politics might as well have been current events. That's what I wrote about. The only feedback I got was that I could have spent a little more time composing a well thought out idea because I certainly had much better writing skills and ought to care enough to put them to use. That landed hard. 

Back to the Civil War. God, have fucked this shit up. If I so much as opened my mouth in my region and spoke my mind about what I felt and thought during those two hours, I'd be tarred and feathered. I am so disappointed with my people right now. It got so bad for me on Sunday night, sitting in the airbnb RV (yes, really, in the middle of nowhere in front of the James River, how cool is that?) that I looked at Cielo and said: 

You know what? I think I need to look inward at my own people and work on some compassion because right now I can't even look at them, I'm so angry. And intolerant. 

This post isn't really about a reenactment but that part was important. The interactive part of it was important. She chose blue and I chose grey intentionally and we both received a card with our soldier's names and enough information about them to make them real. What we didn't know was if they lived or died. We had to find them later and ask about the rest. The battle was executed brilliantly. The narration by the rangers perfectly timed and focused on the people. It was a partisan report. Heard anything like that lately? Didn't think so. 

I never found my guy. I stood in the middle of the camp like a drill sergeant barking out, in the voice I've cultivated (which carries clearly and succinctly across a football field) Corporal Benson! Corporal Berry Greenwood Benson! Five minutes later:

Corporal Berry Greenwood Benson, I am from the North, I hold your paper and I am NOT leaving until we speak.

Eventually I went to the grey camp and stood sternly in front of seven or eight very serious men, having stripped their wool uniforms still sat in the shade soaked in sweat. 

Where is he? I asked for grey for a very good reason and I need to speak with him. This is so important. I cannot express just how important this is today, of all days.

One man looked up, so serious, and said, yes, it is and we will tell you anything you want to know.

I know about this war, I really do. And I would love to sit down and talk to all of you for hours but I have to go soon. We have to drive back to Henrick and I really need to talk to my soldier. You understand why, don't you?

Yes, we do. I'm sure he'll be back, his stuff is still here. His girlfriend's stuff is still here. 

I stalked him in front of the port-a-potties for a while in case he'd gotten sick and then realized I was being ridiculous and if the man was sick I needed to just leave him alone. I took my piece of paper with his name and other things and we drove back to Henrick. 

Sunday was important and that is where my head was. It was a brief break from the moment I tore myself away from the chaos that is my job right now (seriously, my hair is on fire) and drove six hours to Aberdeen, slept three, got up and drove another five to Henrik. The traffic was horrific. It should not have taken that long. On Monday morning I left at 8 and arrived in Basking Ridge at 2. THAT is how long it should have taken. 

So this is a lot of driving to create a very brief window in which to be with Cielo and grow back a little skin and stand on a battlefield which helps me to remember who I am and how I want to be in the world.

Now I'm going to give you a timeline, which is the point.

Preface:

My LinkedIn profile is active and by active I mean that the little flag that indicates currently looking or willing to talk to you anyway is checked. All that means is that I show up in keyword searches. What this does is fill my inbox with the very worst kind of spam but it also sends me lists of job openings local to me that I can peruse at will. The spam is spam because the recruiters are what we call Bottom Feeders. They are the recruiters who read the job openings on company sites and then go looking for candidates without a recruiter contract with the company. They are hoping for one of two things; they want the company to say, yeah, ok, we'll pay you the fee, or they want to say, hey, company, I have a contractor instead of an FTE and all inclusive it's a great deal. They are looking for contractors willing to work for 25 - 50% of the going rate. 

DELETE DELETE DELETE

On October 1 I almost deleted an email that I thought came from a bottom feeder but I wasn't sure. I was moving way too fast. I didn't delete it because the subject line contained several key words that knocked me over the head:

• Business Intelligence
• Data
• Data Governance
• Data and Business Intelligence Team

Not responding is the same as not deleting. Seriously. You have 48 hours and the lead gets cold. Also, it disappears into the depths of your inbox. So I forgot about it. However, because LinkedIn and Indeed both send you reminders, I got a reminder on October 4 at which point we begin the timeline:

• Monday, October 1 - First email hits my inbox
• Thursday, October 4 - Reminder email hits my inbox
• Thursday, October 4, 6:42 PM - sent response and out of date resume with what I would consider some pretty horrific typos and which should also have been rewritten for this particular job BUT there was no time. Explained myself thoroughly. I did not expect to hear back but here's where the Tidal River comes in...
  
  The tide comes in every six hours and then it goes back out. The tide comes on its own schedule. You might not be ready for it but when it comes you have a choice. You can either get in the water and go with it, or you can pull back onto the shore and wait for the next tide or no tide at all. Sometimes there is a drought and the tide doesn't look like a tide at all. Or sometimes you have no reason to go to the water. Sometimes you don't think it is time to go to the water. The job description was too good to not at least send a not so perfect resume and a response about why I was sending the not so perfect resume anyway. 
  
  
• Friday, October 5 - TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT IT
• Saturday, October 6 - off the radar entirely
• Sunday, October 7 - it never happened
• Monday, October 8 - Response came in at 9:36. When can we chat?
• Monday, October 8 - I finally looked at my email at 3:20 
• Monday, October 8 - played email tag with HR recruiter
• Monday night, October 8 - missed phone call from HR recruiter - communication error (she thought I meant 8 PM, not 8 AM Tuesday)
• Tuesday, October 9 - 7:45 AM phone interview with HR recruiter
• Wednesday, October 10 - 2:30 phone interview with hiring manager
• Wednesday, October 10 - end of call, I'd like to see you as soon as possible, when can you come in? Uhh... I have a 3 PM, I have a 3 PM too, HR will get back to you and we'll work it out. OK, good, thanks, bye!
• Thursday, October 10 - email from HR recruiter: Which of the following times will work for you (assumptive close, you all know perfectly well that I am onsite in Basking Ridge with the client. Ergggg:
  
  This Friday:  2:30 PM
  Next Tuesday 1:30 PM
  Next Thursday 2:30 PM
  
  Shit. None of the above. I thought you'd give me a least a two week wind.
  
  
• Friday, October 11 - 2:30 - 4 PM - onsite interview with the entire team and the hiring manager
• Friday, October 11 - 4 PM - escorted to the elevator by the hiring manager; I expect you'll hear from us soon. 

Christ on a bike. I had to fill out the application and the background check form and send it back electronically before I left the house. The editable form was an unmitigated disaster (fonts too big, couldn't be changed) but my handwriting is abysmal. 

Here's a thing I do up front now, by the way. If you are looking for me, if you reach out, after the first interview which is usually HR, I say this:

So, in the interest of full disclosure, because I no longer have dates on my university information, you need to know that I did not complete my degree. If that is an issue, we should not continue. It has never been an issue but I don't want it to come up after the fact. 

It is always the same question and always the same answer. Women get it. Men shrug it off.

The question is: Why did you stop?

The answer is: 

Life got serious. I became the primary, and for a while, the only source of income for my family. Eventually I became the only source. These things happen, my education continued in the field. 

But here is the new question that is coming soon:

High school: Why did you leave at the very end?

The answer is very easy and I dare you to challenge me. 

Un-proofed - gotta run. Beloved son-in-law is speaking at a Barnes and Noble this afternoon and immediately afterward, Elizabeth and I are making a run five hours North to visit with my Dad and S and S's mom who has recently moved East (and we are loving this loving this lady). 

My dad. Time is limited. I don't have words right now but I can get there. 

Lastly - Facebook is about to go dark in the event that there is indeed a background check. Too many posts about women's rights and mental health. Not too dangerous but not worth the risk. It will come back on. 

2465

 

My father's hands

There are a dozen photographs just like this but they were taken more than fifty years ago. It wasn't until I imported the image into the frame that I saw the curve of his arm and the cup of his hand that has cradled my head exactly like this since the day I was born.

I didn't expect to have this and I'm trying to find its mate or at least one of them, a bookend from the beginning. In my mind I see one specific photograph. He is holding me exactly like this except I am very tiny and he is very young. I can't be more then a week or two old and he is no more than twenty-five and a half. Tall, lanky, slightly bearded in an attempt not to look fifteen, cradling an infant as if he's just lost his entire heart. 

When I looked at that particular photograph in an album or copies of it floating loose when I was growing up I thought about a particular story my dad told me. I have never questioned the relevance and I'm not going to start; I think what's pertinent is that I didn't need to. Ever. 

I was fairly young the first time my father told me about a very bad dream he had when I was small. Maybe eight or nine months old. Old enough to sit up but not much else. He was standing on a bridge looking down into a river and he saw me sitting at the bottom looking up at him. I was wearing my winter coat and I was just looking and he said, glug, glug, glug. I guess those are the sounds he imagined I'd make if I were drowning but doing it without any thrashing around. 

And he couldn't do a damn thing about it. 

Later when I was maybe sixteen and my brother was fourteen, or maybe a year earlier, Jack had a tooth removed from the back of his throat. This required general anesthesia which is scary and when they brought him home he took a bath because Jack still loved baths. Jack also loved to lie very still, face down in the water and hold his breath as long as he could. I imagine Jack has bionic lungs or something like that. My father knocked on the door to make sure Jack was alright and of course, Jack didn't answer because his ears were underwater and of course my dad opened the door and saw him floating face down in the water after general anesthesia and his heart stopped and he scooped him, naked and wet out of the water.

Jack was startled. My father has only sobbed like that within my hearing one other time although I'm quite certain there wasn't just one other time.

We grew up, Jack and I, in some terrible circumstances. Not everything was horrible; a good bit of our lives were quite privileged. Everything is subjective. Regardless of where we did or did not go to school, our collective education is better than most within our social demographic strata. We are for the most part ethically minded. We don't always succeed but we try because it matters. We believe it matters. That doesn't spring up out of the earth. We are compassionate, both of us, within the framework that will support compassion (we do our fucking best). Because we believe it matters and we want to be. That shit does NOT spring up out of the earth. 

Both of us are damaged. I can't say which of us more so because I can't see into my brother. My own pathos would have me say it has to be me but I can't possibly know that. 

I lost my mother. I have no idea how the hell I'm going to cope with her death. I really don't. It isn't going to be pretty. It isn't going to be good. But the fact is, I have lost her and the sooner I find my way back to the memory of love the better off I'm going to be. Right now the best I can do is insist on compassion. Compassion from me, compassion from my children and my brother although I think this really isn't a problem.

We come into the world without blame. No original sin, no sins of the father or the mother, nothing at all. We just are. Before that first breath we are our best possible selves and then we take that first breath and from that moment forward everything is a choice. I know that's a lot to put on a newborn and I'm oversimplifying it but external stimuli is what makes or breaks us because I don't care how good your gene pool is, you can be crushed like a bug in the first thirty seconds of your life or you can be cradled by that man's hands and have a foundation you can't even identify.

A foundation that can get you from here to there, in the dark with third degree burns and the absolute belief that you are in it by yourself, beyond redemption.  

Those hands can get you there because they've been there your whole life. Just like that.

879

Del Amitri's Dining Room Table

To be clear, I have a long standing love affair with Justin Currie but it's stuck in time. Having listened to him speak a couple of times, more recently than not with that lovely Scottish Brogue scrubbing off some of the hurt spots

(why IS it that some sorts of voices can do that for no good reason at all?)

I don't think he'd be surprised in the least. I could have picked any point in time to be stuck in and he wouldn't be surprised in the least. I am stuck in 1992. Del Amitri was formed sometime in the eighties, put themselves on the map with a hit single I've only heard recently in 1989, and produced at a reasonable, steady pace unitl 2002 under the 'benign dictatorship' of Justin Currie and Iain Harvie. Currie released three solo albums (none of which I'm aware of being aware of) between 2010 and 2017 and the reunion tours started up sometime in 2013. Not sure if those hit my radar either but Downfall Tonight followed by Always the Last to Know are apparently part of the soundtrack of my life that plays in the background on a perpetual loop which, fortunately continues to grow. 

A note on the growth of the soundtrack we all have playing on whatever media it was born, in the back of our heads: sometime before I was sixteen, maybe even as young as eleven, when I noticed the difference in musical likes and dislikes between generations and later demographics in conjunction with the constant change and growth/development of music and the different genres in the music industry, the kernel of concern which became the root of fear was born. At what point, I wondered, do we stop being open to new music? At what point do we become fixed in a single or just a few genres (I KNOW I was too young to have the word genre the first time I had these thoughts)? Later I had a similar line of questioning when it came to recreational drugs but that was more about the wistfulness that happens sometimes when you know you are going to grow up and some things will be left behind; you just don't know when or what possible rite of passage will cause the leaving. The similarity between the thoughts is the impetus behind the closing of our ability to hear which is really the closing of a cultural circle, the final drawing of a line which separates Us from Them. The operative phrase being, 'the ability to hear'. Later, I decided I never wanted that to happen. I wanted to maintain the right to continue to choose from each new wave, some thing or things that I liked and wanted to hear and I wanted that soundtrack to get bigger.

It did and it does and so Downfall Tonight doesn't come around very often because it takes the soundtrack a while to cycle and the newer stuff is often causing stops and starts, but when it does come up, the whole of it washes over my head, comes back around, picks me up and deposits me wet and somewhat disoriented in a basket of loosely defined memories for all of three minutes and thirty seconds. Other than that I never think of it. I never think of it except this morning when I was trying to shut down a Facebook feed that's been driving me batshit and there it was.

Under the heading of things you really didn't need to know about me but are worth the confession because:

1. The human condition is funny as shit
   
   and:
   
   
2. The human condition is funny as shit

The Shit That Makes Our Hearts Go Pit-a-pat

(there's nothing up there, by the way, but there COULD have been - swipe left, swipe left, swipe left...)

A couple of years ago I turned on a search for dining room tables on Facebook's local tag sale sites. I wasn't aware of what I was causing at the time. I opened one of the four tag sale groups I frequent and typed dining room table into the search bar and brought up the current selection of dining room tables. Not much, at least not much in my price range or not what I wanted in my price range. 

I know I've written about this in the past. In this part of the country, mostly this isolated area outside of New York City, maybe it's even limited specifically to Fairfield County; I'm not really sure, some odd things happen with regard to the actual value of material goods and actual currency. It isn't perpetual but it happens often enough that it's worth paying attention and worth not spending any money until you find exactly what you're looking for. Assuming you can wait. I can almost always wait. I've had a bare house before and I can have a bare house in the future. 

I'll admit right up front that I have a weakness for dining room tables. Specific dining room tables from a specific era. Also chairs. I have a weakness for the chairs that belong with them. There. I typed it. You knew we were going somewhere anyway, right? If you're S, you have a pretty damn good idea what I'm dancing around. You know I'm hopeless and you hope my father forgets that first one which, by the way, left my attic last Friday along with the four chairs and they will never return and we can all forget that ever happened. It never happened.

Material goods versus actual currency: Sometimes people make errors in judgement when they purchase furniture or fixtures or carpets or drapery or cabinets or a whole lot of other things. Mostly furniture if they're doing something without a decorator and that only happens if they're only doing one or two rooms or just trying to spruce something up. What happens most often is that a piece of furniture is purchased for a room and it doesn't work. The furniture is custom and cannot be returned. They're stuck. Most people shrug and decide to sell it at about 50% of the purchase price which is reasonable and more than fair and they generally find a buyer pretty quickly. Sometimes a seller just wants it the hell out. As in, right this effing second I can not look at that again and if I hadn't paid through the nose for it I'd put it in the garage. 

A photograph is taken and it hits the local tag sale at 10% of purchase price and if I happen to be in the market for just that thing then BANG! Hello, I am your buyer and I will be there in sixty minutes with a check to hold and back on Saturday with cash and a truck (if it needs a truck). I know it has hit the market because Facebook tells me. 

My two very specific living room sofas were purchased within four days of each other, same manufacturer, same model, one custom, one not, one nearly brand new, one probably fifteen years old but it's very hard to tell, for exactly the same amount of money. You cannot tell they aren't the same sofa (other than the upholstery) until you put them side by side and notice the manufacturer changed the dimensions slightly over the last fifteen years. But the style? Not even remotely changed. They are red and gold and if I had to actually shop for them, I wouldn't even have walked in the store. In my recent purging and in the last twelve months as I've looked around at the things I've collected in the last thirty years, not the things I've accumulated, the things I've intentionally curated. Those things I've searched for, picked up and discarded until I've judged a thing exactly, or close enough to what I was looking for, most often without a conscious understanding of the why or how of a thing. Not everything was reached for; some things found their way into my home without asking and curated themselves. 

My mother's great aunt's bedroom furniture showed up when I was seventeen and had all my life slept on makeshift, with hand me downs that often barely qualified as bedroom furniture and most times didn't much notice except that slightly delayed phase I went through in middle school when I would have sold the collective soul of my immediate family for the French Provincial bedroom set from sears with the twin size canopy bed. I didn't need all seven pieces (my friend Terri had all seven pieces jammed into her room and I'm still not sure what they were all for) but I would have taken the bed with the canopy, the tall dresser and the vanity and left my family in the dust.

You have to admit (OK, you don't, but work with me), this stuff is heinous. Good thing it morphed. But really, I WOULD HAVE LEFT MY FAMILY IN THE DUST FOR JUST THREE PIECES. MAYBE JUST THE BED AND THE CANOPY. MAYBE JUST THE POSTS AND THE CANOPY AND I WOULD HAVE FOUND A WAY TO MAKE IT WORK FROM THE GROUND. Many, many years later, I did have a canopy bed. I had an ornately beautiful four post bed onto which I chose not to put the canopy or even the cross rails because it would have interfered with the ceiling fan. But I thought about it. I thought about at least those rails. That was part of the marital furniture that went right out the door at 10% of the purchase price...

The desire for the princess bed played behind the soundtrack unnoticed but morphing slowly or maybe percolating. I didn't think about it in my bed which was not really a bed, just part of a sectional without the bolsters that worked well enough even though the twin sheets had to be tucked in an awful lot. I fit. The dog fit (miraculously I got my 98 pound self and my 110 pound Great pyrenees onto that bed every single night) and I fit and later when no one was looking, my boyfriend fit. But not with the dog; she wasn't having any of it. I have no actual memory of where my clothes went after the big old multi-colored dresser from the salvation army with the drawers that stuck except for the dead of winter, was finally hacked up for firewood by my father. I seem to remember some very small pine thing. But I can't be sure. I can be sure it wasn't relevant. 

However.

When I climbed into my mother's great aunt's bed, onto a mattress old enough to qualify as hazmat today, with it's curved footboard scooping me into an elaborate embrace, well, it had me. It had me at the curved footboard that said safe, safe, safe, and the insanely (to me, at the time) wide and deep dresser with the mounted mirror, and that freaking wardrobe. That was all. It had me.

I had to leave it behind but later it caught up with me. It is the cornerstone. I don't have to keep it but probably I will. It can go to my girls, it can go to my son, or I can take it back. I can keep it. I certainly won't keep what I have now. There isn't a thing wrong with it and someone will want it but it is only a placeholder. 

Why furniture? I don't know. It isn't all furniture. I guess I'm thinking about the furniture, or I have been because those are the big pieces I need to cull, the things I need to be aware of. I classify them as, things that appear to be part of me, things that have use and fill this space, and things that will stay here to stage the house but otherwise could go right this second if necessary. Oddly enough, one piece really ought to belong in the curated section. I bought it nine years ago with the cash in the envelope after selling seventy-percent of the household furniture, knowing exactly where it needed to go and exactly why and also believing it was a curated piece. It is beautiful. Someone will love it. I think the reason I don't love it is because it is too big. I notice there are three things I really don't like.

1. I don't like too big
2. I don't like non-functional
3. I REALLY don't like too much money. As in, it cost too much money, which means I haven't bought anything new except electronics and very small pieces of office furniture in a very long time. 

The first dining room table was a disaster. My father called it a rescue and he was right. It met almost none of the criteria except that I loved the style and to date I hadn't managed to get my hands on anything close to what I wanted. I didn't expect to ever get my hands on anything close to what I wanted. All of it is so far out of my price range I haven't been willing to look. Antiques. I have a weakness for antiques. Many antiques are only to be looked at and if you want them restored they actually lose their value. It isn't that I mind personally the loss of value, I feel guilty about it. I'm destroying something that ought to be left and maintained as is. An antique is history. I suppose if you can restore with materials from the correct period then you aren't doing as much damage but you're still doing damage. I feel the same way about old houses. I know they have to be kept up to code if they're to be lived in but please, for the love of God, DON'T FUCKING UPDATE THE KITCHENS AND BATHROOMS BEYOND WHAT'S REQUIRED. Don't tear the floors up. Go live in a new house and leave this one alone. Oh, shut up, Alecto.

Also, restoration is not something I'm prepared to do myself or pay for. I paid way too much money for a non-functional dining room set. Later I replaced it with a heinous (to me) facsimile for $200 at an event called Minks to Sinks. I got it for $200, the table and the chairs, because on the last day everything gets cut to the bone just to get it out from under the tents. So they don't have to send it to the landfill. The antiques went to the attic. I hated the replacement but it was utterly functional and with the chairs and the extra leaf (maybe even two, I'm not sure anymore) it was absolutely in the right price range. I closed my eyes and thought of England. I wished I'd taken the farm table back in 2009. 

When I put the dining room table search in motion I was already in that zen state called watch, wait, and leave your feelings at the door. I didn't have the energy for another broken heart. Periodically a Facebook notification would pop up with a list of tables and chairs. 

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

Hmmmm....

Nope.

Holy shit.... oh hell no. Not for that amount of money. Lady. I think you PAID $12,000 for that thing. Why the hell would anyone give you $8,000 for it now? Because it's in perfect condition. Got it. Nope.

Houses get remodeled, gutted, started over from the ground up and the furniture is literally put out on the lawn. And it is GONE in ninety minutes. Nope. Not paying that. I also noticed all the furnishings were pretty much the same. The people all do their homes pretty much the same and five years later they redo their homes, pretty much the same. Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

Whoosh. Heart stopping breaking crying weeping sniveling into the keyboard no no no no no no no I am not paying that much for that table even if it IS 10% of the purchase price even if it IS in perfect condition. It does NOT come with its table pads. Why the hell isn't she including the table pads? I see. It doesn't have pads. It has one perfect oblong pad which is an actual cover and it's going to fit her new table perfectly. Grrrr. Table pads cost a lot. Most table pads are custom and don't let anyone tell you they aren't. The pads would have cost more then the table. Grrrr.

Nope.

Two weeks later the table popped up again. I sent a message requesting a viewing. 

Refer up a few paragraphs to the part where I show up with a check. Not cash. A check. 

On the way to the viewing I swung by a BOA drive thru and took out cash. I told myself it was just in case I was going to buy the thing and then I wouldn't have to go to the bank on Saturday. I had my checkbook. I wasn't being ridiculous.

When I walked in that house I wanted to turn around and walk back out. There wasn't anything wrong with it and it wasn't any bigger then any of the other houses I'd walked in and out of but there was something not quite right. It wasn't wrong either, it just wasn't nice. It had a cold, edgy undertone going on. I first encountered that particular brand of wrongness when I was cleaning houses in this area thirty years ago. It took me about two clients to recognize it and politely decline the business with no explanation offered. Not even when they called me back and demanded one (and they always did). There's plenty of that around here, those are the houses that sell at 80% of the purchase price and I'm not meaning to trash an entire demographic, it's just personal experience. I didn't want to deal with her and I almost left except I remembered I was looking at a piece of furniture and holding the money. I wasn't looking at a potential client likely to sap 80% of my energy while producing only 20% of my revenue stream. Maybe. If that.

I really didn't want to be there. That's how badly I wanted the table.

{Interlude: for those enlightened few who have spiritually raised themselves above and beyond material wants, turn the volume down, I can hear you all the way over here; I am already aware that I'm going to hell and will starve to death when TEOTWAWKI happens and/or have my innards noshed like a scooby snack before my heart stops beating during the next zombie apocalypse. I hear ya. I'm pushing your buttons. Simmer, it will get better when you actually surrender and are able to see in shades of grey again. Possibly even fifty ;) sorry.}    

I went around the corner into a cavernous space I really can't explain. I think it is a kitchen with a massive dining room size eating area that can't possibly be a dining room because there is no separation between the spaces and the style of the house doesn't support that configuration. The table was squeezed into what looked like a breakfast nook and it was covered with an oversize cover which, it turns out, was the custom pad, just too big because both leaves were out. The ad indicated a slight 'ding'. When she pulled the cloth off and turned on the overhead light I nearly came to my knees. There it was, the dark cherry, high gloss table that had been percolating right on top of the lizard brain for years. It was perfect. Except for the 'ding'. The 'ding' had to be pointed out to me. Seriously. I couldn't see it. 

I handed her a pile of cash and said I'd be back on Saturday at 10 AM.

I spent the first six months treating that thing like the baby it is. Was. It got lemon oiled weekly. It was protected from all manner of things. Except me. It was not protected from me. I bought it placemats because I didn't want to cover it with a cloth and I didn't have pads. The placemats were textured, seriously textured (they were really cool) and put scratches on the surface. Elizabeth and I built a bookcase in the dining room (because it was January so it was too cold to do it outside or in the garage and the dining room has the most natural light) and while I managed to not use the surface of the table for too much, I did slap the drill down without thinking and Elizabeth threw two boards right across the top and when I screamed even I thought maybe my toe had been cut off. 

Later I decided to work from the table and gently put my notebook down on the surface. Gently, so gently. I put my mouse to the right, mousepadless because who the hell uses a mousepad anymore, but I put my coffee on a coaster (genius, pure genius, so there's a spared spot on the table). The collected gunk wasn't coming off with a cloth and oil. I used the scrubby side of a sponge. I should be in furniture jail right now. I no longer work at the table and this is why I cannot have nice things. 

But I accept the table. I accept that it will never be perfect again. I accept that it will continue to acquire scratches and 'dings's but at a less alarming rate. I accept that it has curated itself and that it may yet again become a workspace. I have a very large blotter that, while rectangular, manages to work well enough at the end of an oblong table. I accept this because the furniture that makes up my compact workspace may not come with me. If it doesn't fit, if it's just too much then it will not come. It has not been curated. 

Not like the corner cabinet my mother bought me when I lived in Stamford and Elizabeth was small. It holds china, nothing but china, mostly from my first marriage which I am likely to give up well before I give up the family stuff although I worked hard to round out those pieces over the years. On top of the corner cabinet are the toys from my mother's childhood. They are brightly painted wooden toys my brother and I played with when we were small and visited my grandparents in St. Louis. There is a jack in the box that worked for a while and then stopped but I cannot imagine parting with that. It followed me all the way here. 

There are not so many things as I thought there might. As I clean out closets and kitchen cabinets and empty the attic a little at a time and find it easier to dispose of books then I ever thought it might be, there are only a few stumbling blocks. 

The need or desire to curate, which is not quite the same as acquire, appears to be gone. Periodically I have the need to acquire for functionality which is very different. Mostly I just don't because I'm aware that I will have to get rid of it and if it won't be useful for staging then I'm going to have to come up with another option or do without. I don't want more stuff.

But tables. Man. Tables. I had to kill that feed. It's a dating site. It's like Justin Currie standing over my shoulder saying, look at that! Would you look at that! Just feel it, just for a minute, close your eyes and then walk away, you know you can do it...you can fight this thing

(apologies to Mr. Currie for the slight adjustments)

The light is turning red and I guess I'd better go
Before I make a grave mistake and let my feelings show
And twenty miles away it waits alone for me
But when I try to picture it, you're the one I see

And in another situation I could put up a fight
But you will be my downfall tonight

So the night is coming down, drowning us in blue
And it all points towards the things we know we shouldn't do

And as I look at you and I fall under your spell
Well I know I should be thinking of it sitting there covered up in stuff

And when faced with temptation you know a person should stand and fight
But you will be my downfall tonight

 

Be my downfall be my great regret be the one table
That I'll never forget
Be my undoing be my slow road to ruin tonight

4154

*They* are in the minority so who else doesn't want to know?

It starts with a forward to Rebecca Solnit's most recent post on the Literary Hub regarding the Denial of Old White Men. She writes well, is current, relevant, and worth the read. She assumes the same of her readers, at least in terms of attention span and the ability and desire to parse information. I was halfway through the piece when I got tired. Tired is subjective. If I think a thing is 500 - 750 words because most political posts are written in short bites, then I will be tired at 1,000. If I remember slogging my way through Foreign Affairs in the '80s and '90s and finally settling into the depth of that one inch thick quarterly periodical, then we will have just cleared the forward coming out of the fourth meaty paragraph. But I am tired so I scroll down, and down, and down and as I am readjusting my expectations I decide to take it out for a word count. It is a respectable 2,434. Of course it is. She's not a journalist, she's a historian, an activist, and a few other things. I go back up to the top and start over and when I'm through thinking about what I've read I come back to the original post.

Chris Hayes of MSNBC said, “The possibility hangs over all of this, one I return to over and over, that Blasey Ford’s account is absolutely true and that Kavanaugh has absolutely no memory of it and thinks he has been falsely accused.”

Great. not just a mysogynist, but a mean, blackout drunk...and that's the *best* case???

They Don't Want to Know: Rebecca Solnit on Brett Kavanaugh and the Denial of Old White Men

How do you respond to something like this? How do you leave it sitting out there? It's just sitting out there. There is no appropriate emoticon to tell someone you've read this and it has impact because that's really what matters at this point. He's put this thing out there, not just the link but the entire text, that terrible Chris Hayes quote which damns us as a Nation, followed by his own outraged assessment.

Later I came back, surprised by two things; the bare truth of my response and the fact that I would respond at all. I am way beyond even talking about this. I am sick.

Yes. That is absolutely the best case. Isn’t that unbearably fatalistic? It isn’t what I really believe; it’s the thing that gnaws at my guts on the tail of Anita which just happened yesterday, didn’t it? Apparently not, because we’ve forgotten, collectively. Based on results, or at least current events.

I am watching tho, this graceful undulation, the undercurrent that runs just below, and in the opposite direction of the overt hostility toward anything which is not white, male, and elite, anything that would even consider taking a job from an *American* (don’t start me), much less setting foot on US soil without damn good (check a box) reason.

I am watching the white faces of Corporate America become dots in the background of all those other checkboxes on the census form that don’t say just ‘white’ - as if that actually means something.

They should be panicked. They should be reaching for the moral equivalent of an epipen. The ones with the amazingly jacked up prices.

I would like there to be a better best outcome. I think about what I want that outcome to look like and then I meter my news intake very carefully. To make sure my head doesn’t explode.

My children have a great deal of fortitude; I’m afraid they’re going to need it.

What I didn't say is this:

We can't keep blaming the Old White Men. We can't keep blaming them because there really aren't all that many of them left; they are no longer the majority. So sayeth Rebecca and she be right. So why do we keep pointing our collective fingers and shaking our angry fists at a handful of old white men? I graphed the US Senate. I missed one, by the way. I don't really care who, I just realized at the last minute that I didn't have a round number but it's math and one number isn't going to throw the average when the bottom is 41, the top is 85 and it's a gradual slide all the way up, or down depending on how you want to look at it. I thought about dropping Oren Hatch and his counterpart off the bottom and then realized it wouldn't change a damn thing. The average age no matter how you cut it up is 63 and the way we get there looks like this:

If you run the stats on the top 25 on the Fortune Whatever, you're going to find the same thing. Actually, you're going to find it dropping. The gender gap remains the same but the median age is dropping and guess what else is happening? I'll let you think about it. It would scare the crap out of Middle America (that's the polite term for the not so polite colloquialism, 'Merica) if they were to pick up an electronic trade journal and start reading. That isn't a slam on Middle America, by the way. They're way too busy trying to figure out how to make a $400 income stretch to fit $600 in living expenses to lift their collectively panicked heads. And we call them 'Merica for it. Nice. We also toy with the idea that their right to vote be removed because they're too stupid to think for themselves. That's the future Oligarchy speaking coming out of the same sort of fear. We are also too busy to lift our heads...

Before I get to the point, I do want to establish the definition of Old White Man. What is an Old White Man, exactly? Oren Hatch. He is an Old White Man. He scares the shit out of me but you know scares me more? Mike Pence scares me more. Mike Pence gives me nightmares. No joke. Nightmares, as in wake up in a cold sweat and run to the bathroom and stay there until there's nothing but dry heaves. He is 13 months younger than my first husband. Fifty-nine has never qualified as old. Never. Why not? Because if you were born in 1959 and your grandfather came from County Sligo through Ellis Island and your father served in Korea, you were in college in the '70s and you have stated publicly that your original inspirations to enter politics were MLK and JFK, then you have been exposed, more than exposed, you have been immersed in the decade of change that slammed a nation against a wall and turned it on its head. And from that lake of possibility emerged the man who embodies probably 75% of the things which scare me most. 

Mike Pence is not old. 

Mike Pence is not old because I am not old. Mike Pence is me which means I am the problem and so are you. 

And so are the children we raised because we came from that generation and knowing better we have raised better children, haven't we? 

Enough picking on Mike Pence. He's just my personal goblin. Everyone has their own. 

In the event that you didn't read the article (and I wouldn't blame you, it's an entire 2400+ words), Rebecca's point is this: 

They don't want to know. They (who is they?) don't want to look at what Kavanaugh might have done (why do I have to write 'might'? you know the answer). They don't want to see it, have to deal with it, or quite honestly, have to stop doing it. They are not old men. The statement about what boys do in high school (this is SO out of context, I'm sorry) being left behind and forgiven sounds unbelievable. What planet does this man (who made the statement) actually live on? But I am reminded of another statement made not so long ago by a very good man in his late seventies. He was bewildered and asked, how can I be held accountable now for something we did then that was not considered bad? I didn't have an answer. I think I wanted him to admit that what he had done was egregious. 

It was egregious but the truth is in the seventies EVERYONE treated women like objects, including women, to at least a certain degree. We hadn't learned to stop that shit yet; in a lot cases we couldn't even see it. This doesn't make it excusable; what is required is the looking business. I see this thing, I see this behavior, I see that it was incredibly harmful.

When I hear the self-righteous of today turn back and point at the bad behavior of the men in suits in the seventies it has become automatic to say: yes, you are correct, that was awful and it continued right into the eighties and morphed into other sorts of venomous attacks in the nineties and we are making progress. However, while the suits were doing that, the men without suits were quite a bit more blatant about it. And the men who marched in movements had literal harems. A good chunk of the women's movement was the right to choose and the right to choose also involved which man you slept with and which man you slept with hadn't gotten past the ownership stage yet.  

And today, the men in their sixties and seventies who believe they are enlightened are the least likely to be able to examine the last of the unacceptable behavior that still creeps out of the dark corners. This makes them silent predators and we think they are safe. They are not. 

We are all guilty. We are all responsible.

In 1991 the world watched Anita deliberately step onto Charon's boat and cross the River Styx. About six percent of us either could or could not watch, but from the old brain, the lizard brain, we all heard the volume of the collective static increase until the words were garbled and it was only the fact that she remained standing that mattered. 

I remember my knees buckling on the stand. I think it was my first anxiety attack, the first time I thought I wasn't breathing, the first time I really could not make words come out. It wasn't until years later that I found out I really wasn't breathing. That fear, that thought that you aren't? It's not a thought, you really aren't. I remember my knees buckling on the stand and I remember the shame. 

The shame that I could not continue, that I was not strong enough to continue standing. The shame that I was not strong enough to force the air required to speak into my lungs. 

I was tossed, lifeless, onto Charon's boat and crossed the River Styx with my eyes half closed. 

There are a lot of headlines out there today but the nine words that tear through my chest and twist my heart 180 degrees are these:

Why Christine Blasey Ford Isn't Allowed to be Mad

Everyone else is allowed to be mad at Kavanaugh, but not Christine. You know why. 

Christine is on Charon's boat and this time I cannot watch. 

I cannot watch because the headlines are about the Old White Men. I cannot watch because it has been 27 years, the entire life of my first daughter, an entire generation and then some. I cannot watch because not only are we replaying the same deck without even bothering to shuffle but we are playing it worse. We aren't even bothering at polite. We didn't just take the gloves off when Christine stood up, they weren't even on to begin with. 

What does this mean? This means we are slow boiling frogs. 

There is no reason, no excuse, no explanation, nothing at all that could possibly make any of this OK. Not religion, not economics, not foreign policy, not political balance, nothing. No. Thing. 

And yet, here we are. It isn't them, it's us. 

We don't want to know. 

People, why the fuck not? What is it you think you're going to lose by knowing? Seriously. What is it that matters so much more than this shit that's been going on since the dawn of time? 

Again, It's. Not. Them. 

 

2082

 

Your own personal Railroad Tie. Use it so I don't have to.

Abruptly; the man with the beard asks: Which of your parents is that? Is it your father or your mother?

I am taken aback by the suddenness of the question and I don't have an immediate answer although I feel as if I owe him one; an explanation, I mean. I own him an explanation. 

I don't know, my parents are a long time ago, this is more recent, this decade. This is every man I've ever worked with no wait not every man I'm not supposed to broad stroke (who told me that? a man. right) ok maybe 85% of the men I've worked with in the last 30 years or worked for and it's not just men to be fair (why do I have to be fair? why do I feel the need to be fair?) but mostly it's men because that's who it's been, just men, it's been all of the men I've worked for or with who have thrown me under a bus, or demanded an explanation from me right this second or told me I was wrong or told me how I was feeling or cut me off or talked over me or changed the subject and the best three words I ever learned were

Let. Me. Finish. 

I don't have to explain ANYTHING to you and if I tell you I'm not shutting you out, that I'm experiencing something else entirely and you decide to analyze what you think you see, then why the hell am I here?

I don't know, why are you here?

You're not helpful. 

That interchange is out of context for a reason. If you're feeling the need to analyze or fix it, do me a favor. Pick up a good, solid length of railroad tie and bonk yourself over the head with it. Keep it handy. 

The context the conversation above occurred within is the only place I can think of where an explanation is owed. I owed an explanation. I did. I did not owe it to the man with the beard and in replaying the conversation he never said I did. 

"I don't know, why are you here?"

All you helpers with railroad ties in your hands, this is your cue, your only cue. You can think about this one and when you come up with the answer and finally manage to extrapolate, you will never think I owe you an answer again. And you will stop asking me, even if it's only in your head, you will stop asking me and take it, whatever it is, at face value. IT, just is, unless I tell you otherwise.

Down the Rabbit Hole and Into the Fishbowl in 23 & 820 words

This is everybody, not just me (23 words).

I am just a fishbowl under a magnifying glass with a lot of stuff in the bowl.

Eh, sorta pothole: also, I'm rather fond of metaphor and not everybody is good at metaphor, BUT, if I didn't use metaphor as a tool we would be here a lot more words and I would never finish ANYTHING because I would pass out from emotional fatigue and probably dehydration. 

Because I feel the need to explain literally every fucking thing, I'm going to explain the fishbowl metaphor and then I'm going to do my best to stop explaining shit and just write (I just backspaced over an explanation - follow me? Try).

About that fishbowl (820 words).

When people's stuff rises to the surface, or becomes transparent, either by choice, meaning because I allow it, or because the stuff can no longer be contained then you have what is known as the fishbowl effect. I didn't make this up. It's a term (met-a-phor) I first heard in the early eighties. It means people can see you from more than one angle and not just through the mask your/our culture is comfortable with seeing you/me/us. 

Our 'stuff' comes up to the surface in layers. This is the human condition and everybody has layers. Lots of them. Some people have more layers than others and some people have got some pretty ugly stuff under those layers. When I think about this metaphor I think about filo which is that super thin pastry dough which rolled out over and over again until it becomes the miraculous contradiction of delicate, yet elastic tissue which are layered on top of one another separated by small lakes of butter until finally something sweet (Baklava) or savory (Spanakopita) is created by cutting the filo into more layers, yet again. The baker/chef has got to be thoroughly talented to get this pastry right. Most of us just buy the shit out of the freezer section and do our best to contend with the buttering, layering, and baking business. I've only succeeded one time on my own and I'm GOOD with pastry. We will not speak of the failures. They were legion.  

This is how I think of the human condition; so many, many, delicate layers that as they are baked, they are interwoven. The flavors, the added mixtures and textures blend to the point that it is impossible to make a clean separation and yet you can still clearly see the layers. We don't like to think of Baklava and Spanakopita in the same set of layers and we certainly don't want to think there might be a layer of gravel. We don't want to think there might be some gravel IN the Baklava because then we would send the Baklava back to the kitchen. We want perfect Baklava.

And God forbid there are layers, of blood, shit, and vomit in there. I should have stuck with gravel, huh?

We are idiots.

What happens when the world expects and wants perfect Baklava? (met-a-phor. baklava is a metaphor)

Couple of things happen. The Baklava tries really hard to get the fucking gravel out and when that doesn't happen it tries to cover the gravel up. Fast. The Baklava will also flat out tell you that shit ain't there. NO way NO how. And how dare you even suggest it. 

Add in the Spanakopita. We don't want that either. As a matter of fact, it's in the freaking bible. Dude/ette. Pick up your railroad tie. When you're done you can catch up with the rest of us.

Here are some other things that happen. I'm sure you can see this coming. The world beats the crap out of the Baklava for the gravel. This makes more gravel. Eventually the Baklava jumps off the Tappanzee Bridge or is found dead in its apartment leaving a note for its daughter and the world beats its collective chest and wails in collective grief, bellowing:

WE MUST DO SOMETHING TO STOP THIS.

Here is a railroad tie. Have at it. Let me know when you're done yelling, World.

OK, Layers and layers of filo dough and what goes into that pastry is kind of murky so it's hard to see until it splits open and pours onto the counter. However, when it's still walking around, upright, and speaking coherently (most of the time) it is like looking inside a fishbowl. Everything in the layers is visible IF it floats near the edge of the bowl. Not all fishbowls have clear water or, the water isn't clear all the time because there's turmoil in there. 

The other thing about the stuff in the fishbowl is this: Nothing is static. I had an argument about this one time. All things are at all times either in a state expansion or contraction. I realize that's a little too simplistic because there is also entropy and disorder and chaos bypass expansion/contraction. But still, my point is that things do not, ever remain the same. It is the law of the universe. Actually, it's a lot of laws. Crap. I'm starting to explain myself again. Fuck you. OK, the fishbowl. 

The objects in your mirror may be closer than they appear. 

The objects in your mirror ARE closer than they appear.

The object floating near the surface may be larger on the inside.

The object you just came into contact with IS larger on the inside.

Punchline....

The stuff on the inside is none of your fucking business. 

Why? This is Kindergarten One Oh One. It goes with keep your hands and feet to yourself at all times. (yes, that is an actual rule)

It is none of your fucking business because it is on the INSIDE.

Get your railroad tie out. I'll wait. 

That was the end of the explanation about the fishbowl. It's the last explanation I'm going to give because I think I need to explain myself versus I choose to explain something.  

820 Words

820 words to explain 23 words. I'm going to try very hard to stop doing that because I find I am compelled to do that in my life. I'm not compelled here. This is, after all, just a fishbowl. It's where I get to look in. The fact that it's public and other people can see is actually an added bonus because it keeps me honest. 

I can also see how pissed off I am in those and about those 820 words. 

Turning back

It is getting easier for me to follow the rope or the chain backward through the murk. When the man with beard asked me if it was my mother or my father, I really did not know because there was too much stuff in the way. The water was murky; it had recently been churned. 

I've never seen a straight line but if you pick a series of dots and connect them, you can make one. Or, if you look behind you, technically the path of your past is supposed to look like a straight line. I have trouble with that last part. I can sort of see one long rope in a linear world but there are so many barnacles I can't help but wonder if they aren't their own offshoots.

The woman who got scared after a handful of visits said something to me either the first or second visit that strikes me as trite now that I think about it. I suppose, had I walked into her office unannounced, without any sort of referral at all, then it would have been a perfectly reasonable, even helpful thing to say, but I wasn't. I was sent in by the leading Neurologist in the state with a fairly dire diagnosis suggesting a wholistic problem, not anything with outlying issues that could be picked off one by one like low hanging fruit. He was right to a large extent and maybe, to be fair, she was hopeful that clearing a small path would make things a little easier. How could she have known for sure without having talked to Jackie yet?

Here is what I said. I said that I was no longer capable of passing through the doors of a Contra Dance. I said that the last time I'd been was to Flurry with Cielo but the time before that I'd made it all the way into the city for fairly big dance with people I knew and loved, safe people, but at the door, even after having bought my wrist band, at the door, looking in at the dancers, and hearing the music - I did not feel the pull, I turned and ran. 

All the way back to my car parked six blocks away and back up the West Side Hwy and over the Henry Hudson Bridge and North and North and North and North and safely back home to the forest.

And my friend L asks gently, Alecto, will you come dance with me? I miss you so much. We can swap all the way down the line and back. She is so forgiving when I screw up my role because I am so left right challenged but she plays with me anyway. And she never, ever asks me why. She just asks me if I will come and tells me that she misses me. And only sometimes. 

And the therapists said: Oh, we need to get you back in there, wouldn't that be wonderful?

And I said, yes, yes it would.

But that was not what I was doing in her office. Not being able to walk through the doors of a contra dance is a barnacle. It is a distraction. It is unfortunate that I've lost a piece of my life which was joy but it is not a life or death issue.

But here is the thing I finally saw the other day after seeing the man with the beard. It is fraught with landmines. It might be a barnacle with it's own rope coming off the mainline but it's still coming off the mainline.

(do you need to stop and breathe? get your railroad tie?)

Off the Reservation 

I looked at a map and the number of hours it would take to drive to Cielo and back and I just couldn't make it work with the current work schedule. I couldn't be away from a rolling series of rollouts but I needed to get to Cielo. It was a moment of clarity that I could have let go and she would have been fine and I have those moments the same way she does when I need to be with her because she needs me and I feel the weight of that geographic distance between us which generally doesn't matter because the truth of her doesn't have a geography. But I was feeling it. Could I please just sit on a couch or bed with the woman and knit all night with a bottle of wine and bad TV and let the weight of the world creep off into the night. Could I please just make us a bubble because that's what we do, Cielo and I. We make a bubble and in the bubble we grow a little skin back because we are safe, safe, safe. 

I couldn't make that drive work and I had a limited number of weekends in the near future so I started looking for midway points and realized it always comes down to the same thing.

Oy! Virginia! Which of you is dancing on Saturday night on October 6? No, not you. I don't want you. You, yeah, you sound good. You're a good number of miles in between. Okey dokey, Airbnb, whatcha got? 

Somewhere in between I checked in with Cielo. Woman! How's yer foot? Can you drive? Excellent. How's this weekend? Good? I didn't even bother asking if she felt like dancing or actually could dance. I looked at hotels, motels, and airbnbs and then I found it.

(meanwhile I'm sending links and she likes the trailer I won't touch with somebody else's diseased hand because it has one bed and a breakdown which is fine except the breakdown isn't sittable for anyone over 12)

It's on a wide body of water which looks like a slow moving river and if you're stalking me right now because you want to know where I'm staying and which dance I'm attending STOP IT. That's obnoxious. It isn't that I need to hide, it's that doing that is obnoxious. If I wanted to share the information, I would. Railroad tie.

It's on a wide body of water which looks like a slow moving river and there is a great deal of open space and there are trees by the river and it is beautiful. The RV is fully equipped with two bedrooms and a shower and actual hot water. I am a fully certified three minute shower taker. Yes, with soap. It is reasonably priced. I can afford this and I can't afford anything right now. 

I can also envision myself walking through those doors on Saturday night and I have butterflies in my belly. And Cielo might not be up for dancing and that's OK too because the trip isn't about dancing. The trip is about Cielo and Alecto and the fact of the butterflies. I don't care if we spend the entire weekend in the damn RV. I don't care if we spend it in the river or on the grass or driving all over Virginia to see the bend in the road where her daddy was born (and there is literally nothing else there). I don't care. I'll have my knitting and I'll have my dance shoes and I'll have Cielo.

I'm also looking at Saturday nights that might work to go into the city and dance with L. 

And now it gets dicey. Everybody get a railroad tie. 

And now it gets dicey 

I'm going to paint this broad stroke. I notice that broad stroke painting makes some people unhappy. I am one of them but I'm going to do this anyway. This time. 

In my experience (which only means these are the things I notice), women don't do this thing. Men do this thing. I find it incredibly offensive. What it evokes in me is the desire, sometimes overwhelming, to pick up that man's personal railroad tie and bonk him over the head with it. I'm very, very good at bonking. I learned this from my mother. Whole other subject except for the pretty much guaranteed male response to being bonked by a woman for much of anything:

Hey, bonking makes you a bad and undesirable woman.

Or some facsimile thereof. 

...stops and thinks about this...erm. do you, Guy, by any chance, have that reaction when you're bonked over the head by a person with a dick swinging between his legs? Or do you, Guy, by any chance, react some other way? Um, if you're a neanderthal or you think you might die if you don't, do you pick up his railroad tie and beat him over the head? Or, do you consider why you've been bonked over the head? Or, do you turn around resentfully and decide to go to war? Or, do you apologize, shake hands, and try to figure out why you behave like a complete jackass (since he said you were, maybe you were?)? I could keep going but I'm pretty sure the one response that won't happen is:

Hey, bonking makes you a bad and undesirable man.

That would evoke a number of things but the first thing that comes to mind is gut busting laughter. 

Someday women will learn to respond with gut busting laughter.

THIS THING

So. This Thing. Here is This Thing. It's very simple. This Thing is the demand for an explanation. 

Why did you do that?

Why did you say that?

What do you mean?

What DOES that mean?

Explain yourself. RIGHT NOW!

You have to answer right now.

You owe me an explanation.

Well, can we do it this way? 

Why not?

I see you feel this...

You should be feeling this...

You are angry...

Yep, all of those are gender neutral but I'm going to put them in context which is what this is about.

The way-back machine:

1991 in a Small Computer Resale Office  

I am very pregnant with Lucia and I am selling mainframe peripherals on the open market. I sell by phone but this is not telemarketing. I have an established customer base and three government contracts which can only be fulfilled with brokered agreements. I have to win them back each year. I buy and sell within my own market which is Honeywell-Bull. I have an inventory in a warehouse in Allentown, PA which I visit periodically to receive a shipment and breakdown the parts into marketable, shippable product. I can deinstall a Honeywell-Bull DPS6, pack it for shipping, and break down its components for resale. No other woman that I am aware of in the US can do this. I have a mentor in Whitehouse who says I have a mind like a steel trap, the tenacity of a badger, more finesse then any field tech he's ever worked with, and enough lower body strength to compensate for the upper body strength I will never have. In other words, I am, for the first time in my life, aware of being not just tremendously competent but also a female leader in an industry which does not have ANY women. Women touched computers, they wrote code, but for some reason in 1991 they weren't taking those bad boys apart and putting them back together in the field. That was grubby, back breaking work that required a comprehensive understanding of how a mainframe worked from the ground up. I don't mean just the way the spindle in the washing machine sized 500 mb hard drive worked (which was removed with an allen wrench the size of my arm), I mean the way the on/off switches worked on the 4 mb daughter boards that sat on the mother board which made up a fully loaded 16 mb memory board which slotted into the datanet. That was back when you could still see the on/off switches. What are the on/off switches and why don't we fuck with them? Come on. Think. They were itty bitty and It. Was. Awesome. Like seeing God, honestly.

Anyway. That was me. And then there was Denis and Denis was actually the only other guy in the office besides Bob who owned the place and Bob was literally the most inappropriate man I've ever worked for much less with. The fact that he never laid a hand on me (and I'm hoping no one else) is almost not relevant. I'm not even going to go there, it's not part of this conversation. It is relevant that neither of them could deinstall anything. I don't think Denis had seen anything more than a dumb terminal and only because a shipment came through the office once. He sold off a sheet into the Unisys market back when Unisys was about to be delisted. In retrospect that probably had a lot to do with what tipped him over eventually. 

Denis was not happy with me. I don't actually remember why but I do remember he told me that Bob had made me his problem. Uh. OK. I'm a problem. 

How to motivate a sales person to do better than they're actually doing. So many different ways; 99.9999% of them being heinous, even the ones that look nifty on the surface turn out to be heinous little fear based things. Ever seen Glengarry Glen Ross? Start there. That film came out in 1992 but I remember turning it off and walking away some years later when it could be rented. If there had been a pregnant woman in Glengarry Glen Ross, Denis could have written the script.

Denis wrote me a memo. The guy was 32 years old and quite honestly should have known better. It was a full page printed, left sitting on my chair. It was about my performance. I don't think I'd beat the prior month or something like that. I wasn't not selling, I just wasn't seriously selling. I was probably close to term. Who knows. Who cares. The memo was horrible, threatening, and sales is like that but what isn't like is this (because this is not effective unless you want the body out the door):

(I paraphrase)

'...and we all know you're not going to be able to fall back on a career as a prostitute anymore.' 

Yeah, no shit! In writing and everything! I actually called around looking for labor attorneys and got nowhere. 1991. Apparently that was perfectly OK. 

Some other guy a lot of years later:

How did that make you feel?

Like being in a foxhole with all kinds of shit blowing up around me so much noise and shelling and dirt falling and I'm covering my head and crouched down and I think I'm going to die and then it's over and I stand up.

Don't you think that's a little extreme?

Did you really just ask me that? You asked me how I felt and I told you how I felt and now you're questioning how I felt. Are you shitting me? That's how I felt.

Back to Denis:

When I was done reading the memo, I got up and walked over to Denis' super sized cube and stood in the opening. I handed him the memo and told him something. I don't remember what I told him. I remember this:

1. Whatever I said was in response to the memo.
2. It was direct, to the point, and spoken calmly, in a complete sentence. Possibly two, but no more.

Denis didn't like what I said. I remember watching a tangle of emotions cross his face. Confusion wasn't in the mix. I was scared and I wasn't moving. I don't think I was freezing much yet. I was still going either fight or flight and I was in full fight mode, standing in a puddle of adrenaline and I probably looked apocalyptic. Everything he did was crisp and clear and I was focused on his movement, body language, and tone. I think I had forgotten that I was pregnant because I probably would have fled if I was thinking baby.

Go ahead, you started this, now come on and finish it. Unless you're done. Are you done? Because I'm not leaving until I'm sure we're done; bring it on if it's coming on. 

I don't know what I said to him but whatever it was, it was crystal clear. I picked up his railroad tie, wrapped it in barbed wire until it looked like Lucille from The Walking Dead, and then beat him over the head with it. Once. One time. Bonk. Don't you ever speak to me (in writing or otherwise) like that again. 

Guess what he did. 

He did: THE THING - The Demand For Explanation.

People can be bullies, especially when they are sure they deserve to get what they want. The thing is, my experience with bullies is with men and that probably is because for most of my life I have been surrounded by men. Denis wanted me to explain myself because... Denis SAID he did not understand what I said to him. He said, I did not make sense. 

Denis absolutely understood what I said to him. You can extrapolate all of the above any way that works for you. Or not. I don't owe anyone any additional information, which is the point. The purpose for bringing Denis to the glass wall of the fish bowl is to show you an event. 

Under the event called Denis the horrible Bully there are other events in the mainline. Events with the word prostitute associated with not doing well enough. Are you lost yet? How do you think I feel? There are events involving horribly inappropriate men staring me down and telling me how to feel or what to do. In the light of all this, one single twenty minute event on the floor of my parent's living room in 1981 seems almost trivial. 

Choke on that.

Fast Forward to The Foxhole

Fast Forward all the way to 2013 - 2015 and I am lying on a bed in Northampton, MA and all I hear is white noise in my head because the foxhole has literally caved in on me and I can't breathe. I know I have been upset or unhappy about something which I am not allowed to be unhappy or upset about and who knows, maybe it really is all stupid. I don't know. But here's the problem:

I have tried every way I can think of to explain myself as calmly as possible without placing blame. I'm just asking to say how I feel. I'm not being heard, I'm just wrong. In the end I give up and try to back out of the hole and I realize my foot is in a trap and I can't get out because...

I have to explain myself.

Ahhhh Fuck. 

I try to back track but I can't. I have two options available to me. There are only two options because I only know how to do two things when I'm in the foxhole. The first thing is something I'm really good at but I've sworn off it because, first, it's just not nice and second, it's harmful. No good ever came of it. I don't have to be in a foxhole to process the living shit out of someone to the point where they're a blithering idiot lying on the floor in a pool of blood and vomit. My first husband said I should have been a litigating attorney. He is correct. I would have been exceptional. I am also a very good closer but that doesn't mean I should be in sales. 

I don't process anymore. I am not that person. 

The other option in the foxhole is to lie very, very still. 

Christ on a bike, that man would NOT stop. 

You have to explain yourself right now.

Portnoy, I cannot do this right now, I really can't. 

You have to, Alecto.

This went on forever. I don't know how it ended but I know the weekend ended the way they usually did, with me promising myself I wouldn't allow the next weekend to have any conflict at all (I would be so so so good) and me leaving and asking, are you sure you're ok? are you sure we're alright? And Portnoy saying, yes, I love you, yes, it's ok. And twelve hours later Portnoy was down the rabbit hole and round and round we went. Gahhhhh.

I am going to The Village

To dance, I think. I am looking for a weekend that might work.

This is after a hiatus of several years. Two, three? Shit, I don't even know. But it's been quite a while. There are so many, many reasons for not dancing and I find it interesting and relevant that I am quick to dance in Virginia (and now you know why that part of the story is important) but find dancing anywhere near the Northeast abhorrent. All reasons are valid. None of these things are anyone's business. Should they happen to find their way onto these pages or anywhere else, well there they are. It's probably best to take them at face value and also probably best to assume that because people are not two dimensional (go back to the Spanakopita) that nothing exists in a vacuum. 

Common Sense.

Tread lightly. I think this is common sense. I could be wrong. It is OK if the world doesn't know to tread lightly. It's OK if people who don't know me well don't think to tread lightly although I'm likely to look at you funny, it's still OK. 

But I am going to tell you to tread lightly if you've missed that bullet point. Here is the sticking point.

Tread Lightly is the end of the discussion. It is a boundary.

MEN HAVE BEEN CROSSING BOUNDARIES MY ENTIRE LIFE.

Big red letters.

Would it be reasonable to assume that I am more likely than not to pick up Lucille? No? If you think no, I want you to open the New York Times and start reading the front page headlines starting today and work backwards. Keep going. This is your fault. All of it. All your fault. Yes. I just put that on you. Damn, that felt good. 

There is nothing more to say. There is no questioning. There is no analysis. There is no pushing for something more or different. You will find Lucille in your face and worse than that, I will be ripshit angry that I had to use Lucille because I hate that. I hate having my boundaries crossed and I find it mind numbingly awful when it comes to having to use Lucille - for a number of reasons. 

1. I don't like to hit people; I don't like to cause pain
2. I resent feeling bad about myself; I realize that's my stuff, but it still pisses me off
3. When people push that hard to get across a firmly established boundary I am frankly astonished 
4. When people push that hard to get across a firmly established boundary I am afraid of that person

look at the order of those statements. That in itself is horrible. I think. 

By the way, I haven't used Lucille, I just haven't explained myself with regard to going to The Village to dance. I just stopped talking. That was another option. 

I'm thinking of going to The Village to dance. Period. No explanation required and none offered. 

Well that was cool.

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