Then and Now

            Cleaning my office is like an archeological dig.  My attempts at organization are evident in research files for two novels, but they're not just in one place.  Then, there’s the financial stuff that I couldn’t make my mind up about, the old payroll receipts from my previous career, and certain emails which I print and treat as a diary, labeling them by year.  I have every intention of rereading them at some point in the future.  There are also letters and cards from friends with description worth keeping because I mentally and emotionally chart their lives alongside mine.  My sons made holiday cards for me when they were in grade school.  I especially love the Valentine’s Day ones, back when I was their only sweetheart. 

            Photographs are everywhere interlaced between folders like the special sediment created in a volcanic blast.  What seismic event rained down the array of photos that seem to crop up everywhere?  My children's pictures span their lifetime ­­­­– holding a soccer ball, a violin, sulking in front of the camera.  My plan has always been to organize everything into scrapbooks when I retire, in those hazy, long-into-the-future days when I have nothing new to do but consider the past.  But how can you look at a photograph, especially one with you in it, without a nostalgic backward glance?  

            Take the Christmas photo when our son was four.  He was the first grandson so my in-laws went nuts with the presents.  Eric is in a frenzy over his loot, and is stretched out full length on top of his hoard reaching into the recesses under the tree for more.  His brother, 4 months, is in the stroller looking like a chubby replica of his brother at the same age.  My husband is behind the $800 video camera we gave to each other.  His mouth is curved in speech because he’s narrating the present for the future.  What a clever man I married.

           There I am, holding court over the proceedings, a young self-conscious mother.  I look uncomfortable and avoid the camera while still holding my head erect, acting like I’m royally pissed about something.  My diffidence disguises shyness, my sharpness masquerading as matriarchy.  No smiles from me.  Not like now.  

            I look at myself, and think that I was beautiful, and that all my bravado hid a deep well of fear.  Did I find joy in myself?  I think not.  Those were days of stress, and overwork, and pervasive loneliness.  Now is better than then, but then is still in my now.

Deconstructing "Go Dog. Go!"

This was a flash exercise from 2002 that took place in a private room on Zoetrope.  Ms. Parker is the inimitable editor of FRiGG magazine.  I don't remember anymore who wrote what, if we traded off, or if I wrote the entire thing based on her prompt.  It's a lark, and perfect not only to close out the holiday season, but a dogged decade. Happy Holidays!



ZAFA LIT 469: Deconstructing "Go, Dog. Go!"
Lecture No. 1

Ms. Parker (claps hands): All right, class! Quiet! Hey! This course is called "Deconstructing ‘Go, Dog. Go.'" In it we examine the text and illustrations of the eponymous children’s book. Does everyone know what the word "eponymous" means?

Sandra: My mom says boys have penys.  She didn’t say they were a mess, though.

Ms. Parker: Wrong. Anyway, those of you who think this is Remedial Sex Ed 069 should get out now, OK? (Most of the class rises and leaves.) Good-by! Excuse me. You in the back there. (Looks at her seating chart.) Steve, is it? I think I’ll call you Little Stevie. Quit horsing around, Little Stevie, please. Put that away. I’ll see you in my office immediately. (She and Little Stevie leave but they come back shortly. Little Stevie looks spent.) Anybody else? (The class cowers.)

Sandra: (Passes note to friend across the aisle) Do you think she used a ruler on Little Stevie?
    (Friend passes note back) He sat down okay, but Ms. Parker’s walking kinda funny.

Ms. Parker: All righty, then. Let’s start with a short bio of the author, P.D. Eastman. (She reads from a printout from Amazon.com.) "Mr. Eastman authored, co-authored, and illustrated many children's books. He was born in 1909 and died in 1986. He even produced some films, and worked for Warner Brothers and Disney studios. He helped develop the Dr. Seuss ‘Gerald McBoing Boing’ series with Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), when he worked for the animation studio United Productions of America." Does this mean anything to any of you?

Sandra: Was he that nasty-looking old man on the Werther’s candy commercial?

Ms. Parker: Oh, Sandra, I’ve heard you met Mr. Eastman. Can you tell us about this?

Sandra:    He offered me candy.  Sure he was a stranger, but I thought I’d seen him on T.V.  Now I can’t get the taste out of my mouth.

Ms. Parker: Thanks for sharing. Now, I want to give you some background on Dr. Seuss as well. By the way, "authored" means the same thing as "wrote." (Ms. Parker reads from the printout.) "Back in 1957, Theodor Geisel responded to an article in Life magazine that lamented the use of boring reading primers in schools. Using the pseudonym of "Dr. Seuss" (Seuss was Geisel's middle name) and only 223 words, Geisel created a replacement for those dull primers: ‘The Cat in the Hat.’ The instant success of the book prompted Geisel and his wife to found Beginner Books, and Geisel wrote many popular books in this series, including ‘Hop on Pop,’ ‘Fox in Socks,’ and ‘Green Eggs and Ham.’ Other favorite titles in this series are ‘Go, Dog, Go!’ (sic; they did the punctuation wrong) and ‘Are You My Mother?’ by P. D. Eastman, ‘A Fly Went By,’ by Mike McClintock, and ‘Put Me in the Zoo,’ by Robert Lopshire. These affordable hardcover books combine large print, easy vocabulary, and large, bright illustrations in stories kids will want to read again and again. Grade 1 - Grade 2."

Sandra: Were those on the summer reading list?  ‘Cause I never got that list, and it’s not fair testing us on them.

Ms. Parker: Uh huh. Today we would like to examine three issues in "Go, Dog. Go!" Everyone get out your texts. (No one does.)

Sandra: (pulls out Cliff’s Notes for Go, Dog.  Go!)

Ms. Parker: Well, forget it then. I’ll read the book to you. (She does. See the following.)

(Ms. Parker sighs.) Wasn’t that good? (She lights a cigarette.)

Sandra: (Waves smoke away) I resent the female dog’s obsequious solicitation of male dog approval.

Ms. Parker: First, I want to talk about the hat thing. In four separate instances, the red girl poodle, who is wearing a different hat each time, asks the yellow-with-black-spots boy spaniel whether he likes her hat. Get out your texts, please. (No one does.)

Sandra: The hat is like a tunnel.  The male’s approval is like a train entering the tunnel.  Dark and mysterious things happen in there.

Ms. Parker: Fine, then. I'll describe the friggin' pictures to you. On page…hey! There are no goddamn page numbers here! Who edited this book? On page approximately 6, we see her first hat. Why don't you describe it for us, Sandra.

Sandra: It has flowers.  Obvious labial imagery.

Ms. Parker: What page are you on? It’s a simple, blue, bolero-type hat with a yellow daisy on the top. OK, it’s not that great a hat. But clearly she is delighted with it. She asks him if he likes it. He goes all snooty and tells her, "I do not." Why does he do this? She just wants a little affirmation about her hat. I mean, couldn’t he have lied?

Sandra: He could not.  To lie, he would not.  He could not, would not tell a lie.

Ms. Parker: I want to mention, on the next page, following this encounter, approximately page 8 in your text…

Sandra: A hat is never just a hat.

Ms. Parker: …approximately page 8 in your text, we have a blue poodle (who looks like the hat-girl poodle only now she’s blue; perhaps a dye job?) is going into a maze made out of cleverly trimmed hedges—remember the scene in "The Shining" where they’re in the maze? It’s like that only it’s not snowing—and she’s looking like she’s in a trance, if you want to know the truth; do you think she’s been slipped a mickey?—and there are three red male-looking spaniels going out of the maze and they look freaked out, frankly, like they’ve seen some very odd shit or perhaps some odd shit was done to them. Little Stevie, what do we make of this?

Little Stevie:   Is this like hidden pictures?  I see a ruler in the hedge.

Ms. Parker: Next hat encounter. This time she’s wearing a nice, blue, wide-brimmed hat, something Scarlett O’Hara would wear or in this case Scarlett O’Hairy, topped with a dramatic pink plume. Once again, she seems awfully pleased with her hat and she asks the guy if he likes it and again he cops an attitude and tells her he "does not like it." Cad! Shall we mention that this time he’s wearing a hat, a black bowler thing and it’s plenty dorky all right, but does she say anything? Also, as he’s scooting away (they’re both on scooters) he’s waving her feather. The fucker took her feather!

Sandra: Cross-dressing bastard!

Ms. Parker: Next hat is a ski hat. It’s the cutest yet! It’s yellow with white fur around the head and a red pom-pom at the end. It’s very long—so long that it’s pleated accordion-style so that it won’t extend all the way down the mountain. Come on, that is one fabulous hat! But, can you guess? It’s a "no go" with Monsieur le Critique duh Chapeau. And look what hat he’s wearing! What, does he think he’s Santa? Hel-lo! You’re not even Rudolph! You’re a dog!

Sandra: Do these dogs live in West Hollywood?

Ms. Parker: Plus, this time she’s pissed. She’s racing down the mountain—away from him ASAP!—and she’s like, Good-by! (ya little cur) and she’s giving him the evil eye and hoping he’ll bark up the wrong tree and then smash into it.

Sandra:   Outrageous fashion sense, snitfits at the drop of a hat.  Oh, yes, they have to be drag queens.

Ms. Parker: Now! The hat climax! This is during the dog party. Now she’s wearing one superduper stu-fucking-pendous gorgeous chapeau cree-ay-shun that’s got all manner of stuff hanging from it on fishing poles: spiders and fish and mice and birds, etc. Plus, there’s a big bone and candy canes and a pinwheel and lollipops and a big ol’ flowerpot at the top with a pink daisy in it!

Sandra: Yes!  Yes!  I remember that hat.  A perfect doggy dream of a hat.  I betcha she whimpered in her sleep, and twitched her back leg chasing that design.

Ms. Parker: And--well, well!--Mister "I Do Not Like That Hat" finally likes her hat! But look at his party hat! Can we? It’s a newspaper hat he folded! Lame!

Sandra: He’s utterly trying to curry favor.  Does she work in the industry?

Ms. Parker: And then, goddamn it, on the last page she goes off with him in his car. As if all was forgiven! Bitch, have you no pride? The dog won’t give you a fucking inch until you bust your poodle-butt staying up all night to create this heavenly millinery masterpiece, and, look at him, he shows up with a hat he folded from the goddamn sports section and he drops you this one little teeny compliment and you toss away all your good sense and run off into the sunset with him? In his spiffy little red car? Explain this to me!

Sandra: Well, life is short, and the red car is cute.

Ms. Parker (miffed): That’s just plain poppycock! This class is over! I’m outta here. Where’s the snack machine? Everybody come back tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll be well. Tomorrow we’ll talk about punctuation, specifically exclamation points versus periods. And I don’t want to hear anything out of (she points) you or you or...you.

Sandra: Do we get extra credit for not talking?

Ms. Parker: Good-by!

(Your Name): Good-by!

ZAFA LIT 469: Deconstructing "Go,Dog. Go!" will resume tomorrow (that is, Tuesday) when Ms. Parker has recovered her good cheer.

The Road Taken: Marriage

In her New York Times article, Married (happily) With Issues , Elizabeth Weil wrote about her marriage and the journey she and her husband took through various forms of marital counseling.  Ms. Weil was thorough and revealing about her experience, and I felt like I was in group therapy again.  Only in group therapy can one participate as the lowest common denominator of lurker, and still come away with a sense of well-being, consoling oneself that at least you're not as crazy as those other people.  I read Ms. Weil’s piece with a growing sense of her frustration with her spouse, smug relief that my husband wasn’t such a nut, and the sure knowledge that my marriage would never survive such close working conditions as she described.

The article hit all the major pulse points of marriage, including the thrombosis-ridden, blocked arterial passageway of Passion and Intimacy.   In Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel, the author says that passion lives at the crossroads of stability and adventure, “Every person and every couple needs to find that balance."  I imagine an algebraic equation wherein two individuals, each with their own personal intimacy lexicon are juxtaposed (divided? integrated?) with the entity (the couple) they agree upon:

  i+ i   = C
e   

Oh hell, I’m not a mathematician.  I’m an independent and solitary person who never expected much from marriage, certainly not that it would last as long as it has.  Perel says that intimacy doesn’t always lead to good sex.  Then is the opposite true?  My sex life with my husband seems to prove the point that good sex is possible without feeling especially close or in alignment with your mate.  We're going for more these days, bang or bust.  Allowing intimacy into my life in the form of my husband has been and will always be an ongoing experiment: we've never quite worked out the definitions of being a couple.  He said recently that he was committed to our marriage.  I'm not sure that's the same as being committed to me.

Intimacy at this point in our marriage is like coming out of heavy fog and seeing the true lay of the land. I’ve stayed on the road, but can’t help narrowing my eyes and trying to see what might have been at the end of the other path through the woods.

 Currently I like being married, but that hasn't always been the case.  Divorce seemed like the easy out in so many ways, but I like doing things the hard way sometimes.  I stayed in part because I was raised by a single mother.  What were the other parts?  Good sex, autonomy, and also because I married a decent man.

I hoped that someday the layers of resentment and defensive posturing would fall away, and that we could just love each other for the real people that we are.  That means the individual, not the couple, I think.

Family Ties: What We Talked About At Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, my son brought home the most delightful girlfriend.  I’m so pleased that he loves us enough to share her.  They cuddled and cooed all weekend. 

He hummed a happy song every morning as he made his coffee.  I’m usually the first one up, and sit in the relative quiet with my laptop and play.  In the past, he'd groan a hello and head outside for his breakfast cigarette.  No longer.  He's quit smoking, and his "Good Morning!" is electric.  The network news is usually on in the background, and never failed to spark conversation.

These are some of the things we discussed:

1. Social workers burning out because of onerous rules imposed from above that prevent them from actually helping people.
2. Obama being a tool of the capitalist regime.
3. Thomas Edison stealing patents and being an all-round scumbag.
4. The divide between the ultra-wealthy in America and everyone else widening.
5. The Vietnam War ending because the Viet Cong wouldn’t give up.
6. The military cover-up of rape of female enlistees and civilians by American combatants.
7. Obama reneging on his promise to get us out of Afghanistan.
8. America kowtowing to Israel.
9. My objections to being called old-fashioned for quoting, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” 
10. The American government doesn’t really want to capture Osama bin Laden; he’s a red herring, and most likely already dead.
11. Local government control is better than big government.
12. There is no longer a middle class in America.
13. Every American should have access to quality healthcare.
14. People talk about their pets in order to avoid substantive conversations with their fellow citizens.
15. Thomas Edison arranged to have an already doomed circus elephant electrocuted.  His only objection was that he preferred to say the elephant was “Westinghoused.”
16.  A college education doesn’t mean much anymore in terms of getting meaningful employment.
17. Employers don’t want employees who think.  This might lead to asking for benefits.
18. Not calling me old-fashioned.
19. Using the term “mentally ill” rather than crazy when referring to the person heading toward you on the sidewalk who is gesturing widely and talking loudly, and who has no visible Bluetooth.
20. Addressing the question of whether pc terms help make society better.
21. Transgender issues: can a female personality trapped inside a man, or a male personality trapped inside a woman ever be allowed free expression and acceptance without having to resort to surgery?
22. Are compassion and pity the same thing?
23. Monogamy as a social construct to control property.
24. Living outside the grid.
25. The overuse, misuse and abuse of the word “like.”
26. The French Revolution being ill devised since it led to Napoleon.
27. Tours of Israel where you’re shown only what they want you to see.  They don’t want you to see any Palestinians.
28. The American tax rate for the wealthiest citizens was 90% during WWII; been sliding down ever since.
29. The traditional who, what, when & where of journalism has been replaced by opinion in the guise of real news. 
30. Democracy has failed in America.  People feel powerless and disenfranchised.
31. Blackwater runs our military drones, not the military.
32. World hunger could be ended with under $50 billion.
33. Blood diamonds, Congo gold, and human rights violations to make a few men rich in the world.
34. P.O.C.'s are people of color.  I'm a diluted one of those.
    
35. Patience comes with experience, not with age.
36. The importance of never referring to me as old-fashioned.
    

Thanksgiving day was sunny and we walked to a local deli for brunch.  Dinner was later than I'd planned, but everyone pitched in and it was delicious.  The conversation was scintillating, and everyone pitched into that, too.  We didn't agree on everything.  Often, we needed to define and parse our terms to discover how close we were in our feelings about the world.

I felt like we were in a Norman Rockwell painting, a really radical one, where the family loves fiercely - each other, their words, their ideas for their country.

Notes From a Marriage: Micro fiction

LOL

I often think of the day you were so disagreeable and marched into the rain. I followed behind and did not get drenched when the cab sped by.

Buick Sundays

Sundays were always special because mom didn't work on that day.  She was tired from six straight 10-hour nights of waiting on tables.  No one could blame her if she didn't feel like cooking, cleaning or driving.  She'd let me drive the old Buick my Grandpa had given us, and by old I mean made of steel and without power steering.  Driving to Louie's Drive-In to pick up tamales and comic books was my job.  I was twelve and very responsible, but in my mother's mind I think that meant I was thirty-two.

It was fall in Santa Fe, a frosty nip in the air, but no snow on the ground.  My brother was only five and stayed with Mom and was totally not my responsibility for that one day. Everyone stayed inside, but my hangout on Sunday was the Buick I'd managed to park safely in our narrow driveway (there was a telephone pole planted right in the middle of the entrance).  I made the car cozy with pillows and a comforter.  It took on a greenhouse effect with all that New Mexican sunshine filtered and magnified through the windows.  I left them cracked, and the scent of pine and aspen wafting down from the Sangre de Cristos was a welcome counterbalance in my little hothouse.

Stuffed with spicy tamales, I'd snuggle down and read Superman, The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four, Wonder Woman, Tales From Beyond, and something called Classics, which was a retelling of stories like Romeo & Juliet in graphic form. When I'd finish my series, I'd take them inside and exchange with Mom who'd been reading Batman, or Silver Surfer. We were getting along in those days.

That night Mom might cook a one-dish meal like macaroni made with Velveeta Cheese. The nights were cold, but we were warm and full.  Mom sometimes sang and danced when she cooked.  She teased and complemented me.   We laughed and I remember distinct happiness.  On Sunday nights, I went off to bed and read some more, only books this time, and the house was quiet.   I was fed on multiple levels.

Mom began to come home late.  When you get off at 3 a.m. late is arriving home at dawn.  I was worried, upset, angry . . . and curious.  I began to wake up in the middle of the night and wait for her.  She was full of excuses:  she'd gone out with the girls for breakfast; there was an after work party; her car broke down; her girlfriend's car broke down.  I was furious and jealous and possessive, and suspected sex was happening, but only in an amorphous, nonverbal way that made me afraid of losing my mother.

I was afraid of a lot of stuff in those days.  I was almost thirteen and hadn't yet started my period.  Every one of my girlfriends had breasts and had been menstruating practically since birth.  They were short and curvy and cute, and I was not.  Mom and I began to fight everyday, and I missed a lot of school because I overslept.  My mornings had always been spent alone because she and my brother slept late, but now I learned that she habitually peeked into my room on the way to the bathroom.  This was our closest connection.

"Aren't you going to school?"  I wanted her to make me go, but Mom couldn't even make herself come home after work.  On some days, she didn’t make it home at all.  The Sunday I gouged out a hunk of my thigh in a bicycle accident I needed stitches, but didn’t tell Mom about it when she finally came home.  She didn’t notice anything until years later when she asked about the huge scar on my thigh. 

I passed thirteen and we fought and I challenged her and we fought some more.  I was angry all the time and mean to my little brother.  On Sundays Mom was exhausted and withdrawn.  She cooked, but there was no laughter.  I stopped reading comics in the Buick, but read Dostoyevsky by the light of a little portable electric heater bedside until Mom’s car entered the driveway.  I’d quickly shut my book and pretend to be asleep.  We didn’t talk until I decided to go live with my Dad in Texas, and then I slept with her and my brother every night until the day arrived for me to leave.  It was my last belonging.

For the year that I was gone, we remained close.  Her letters were long and full of love and trivia.  When she called long distance, she’d ask if I wanted to talk to my dog and cat.  Long distance was expensive in those days and the gesture meant a lot to me.  She was home, she was family, and my dad and his new wife were not.

I returned to New Mexico carrying the secret Mom had shared with me in her last telephone call: I now had a baby sister.  Dad squeezed his Caddy between the telephone pole and the wall and made it down our narrow drive.  Before he’d turned off the motor, I’d jumped out and entered my mother’s waiting arms.  She looked tired and ill.  She’d had to stop waitressing as her pregnancy advanced, and had taken a babysitting job for a family that lived in a trailer park on the outskirts of Santa Fe.  There was a real outdoor swimming pool there, and my brother and I swam everyday under our mother’s watchful eye. 

My dad wept when he found out about my sister.  He begged me to return to Texas with him and warned me about the bad boys who would swarm all over me when they found out about Mom.  He frightened me, but not enough to endure my stepmother again.  Winter and high school and bad boys were months away.  Mom was resting and getting well and eventually she’d return to night work.  In the meantime, those days at the trailer park pool were like a summer full of Buick Sundays. 

The Dark Good

Writing Blood Mother prompted me to visit a number of sites online dedicated to vampires. I’ve perused countless meanderings into the dark and tortured soul of this enduring archetype of humanity. You read me correctly: vampires underline all things human.

The vampire examines his prey the better to survive, and in the process provides us with a philosophy of good and bad, right and wrong, and dark and light. The juxtaposition of the undead with the living plays right into our shadow selves. The descendants of Dracula are capable of love, of thought, and of making choices. They have free will, and perhaps even a soul. They’ve retained some element of humanity, of their better selves even as they must drink blood to survive. Through them we learn not to automatically equate darkness with evil, or goodness with light. They possess a dark good.

The dark goddesses symbolized death (Medusa, Kali, Hecate, Nyx), which for the ancients was only one point in a spiral which began with life and continually renewed. Their role was neither good nor bad; their fearful aspect evolved later. This doesn't mean that evil people don’t exist. Some of them wear a mantle of goodness, barely embracing the turgid depths of their humanity. When a vampire struggles with her drive to survive, seeking balance with an equally intense fascination with all things human, we understand her turmoil. Undead and human intertwine. Vampires cannot exist without us, and we will never let them die.