April 27, 2005
The dog's widow
For the last two and a half years I've been periodically proposing to the Lad. So far he won't have me, though there's many as would, but I persevere, I persevere. That's what marriage is all about. It'll be anticlimactic when he gives in finally but that, too, is what marriage is all about I guess.
After that guy was mean about Michele's hat on her webpage today I wanted to kick his teeth in I was so mad. I sometimes wonder if I want to marry her too but I don't do it because society dictates that I should just pick a fellow for a life partner. I'm not saying the gay marriage thing, but I'd like to spend the rest of my life having this nice relationship with Michele that I do have, so I think there should be a ceremony about that with new flatware and maybe some tax breaks. Really, if marriage meant what it should, according to me, mean then probably I would marry the Lad and Michele and my parents and my dog before she died. And also I might marry some books by Michael Ondaatje and my white sheets and Yosemite. And also arrabbiata sauce the way the Moms makes it, and I would marry seven o'clock in the evening in summer and "Between the Bars." So it's weird when you think of it that only one important relationship gets celebrated instead of all of them, especially if that person won't even marry you in the first place.
Posted by didofoot at 05:17 PM | Comments (15)
April 25, 2005
Stay with me, baby, stay
I hate being needed or relied on in any way, so what kind of girlfriend could I really be for a man who needed a big knife in his chest just to get through the day and probably required a little something extra in the way of girlfriend sensitivosity? I'm listening to said man's posthumous album for the first time now (this is Elliott Smith, for those of you playing the home game) and trying not to have the thoughts that undoubtedly swamped the discussion boards as soon as the album was released, i.e.
SomebodysBaby2823: OMG 'a fond farewell to a frend' is totaly about his death
SomebodysBaby7984: no omg totally in that song 'dont go down' he is talkin about his deth
SomebodysBaby9442: ru ppl blind that 10sec trak with the cartoon noizez is totaly about his deaths
l4r4cr0ft223432: U PPL R LOSERZ L33T 4EVA!!!I HACKZ0RZ U!!!
SomebodysBaby57: if u play the album bkwrds u kin here a sucking chest wound
I am failing, though. OMG, that lyric "Stay with me, baby, stay," I thought, clutching a throw pillow to my chest, that is totally what I would say to him if he were here. Except I would add: and put the knife down, baby, put the knife down.
Apart from these eerily prognosticative moments, though, it's not the bright and shining album I know he was capable of making, which is not that surprising given that it's unfinished and he was suicidal. Still, during "A Fond Farewell to a Friend" he and I had a nice moment on the tour bus where I taught him how to braid hair and he braided my whole head in a chummy little interlude (by which I mean "friendly" and not "similar to shark bait") and he maybe sang a little and then maybe we had sex later in the bathroom of the restaurant where the bus stopped for lunch. So overall I give the album three stars because it got me imaginary laid. And imaginary braid(ed).
Posted by didofoot at 06:43 PM | Comments (3)
April 19, 2005
And even, yes, even, yes, Tamora Pierce
From home I brought books. I sold off many others to make shelf-room, and even my Arden Shakespeares, and even The Canterbury Tales which I didn't like but might need as an English major, and even a Calvino (but I kept Henry Miller to keep Anais company, third shelf down).
From home I brought Peter S. Beagle, and even Patricia McKillip, and even Terry Pratchett, and even, yes, say it, Charles DeLint. From the store I got Margaret Mahy and E. Nesbit.
Four -- five? -- years ago I lost all my hair, went to New York, and was tongue tied (literally, pierced by a steel shaft and infected and liquid dieting, and cold-headed too with no head-hair) by the books on Ktv's shelf. There she was, prestigiously Columbian and her mantle covered in classics, also cockroaches, and I thought I had better revamp my bookshelves stat, except the cockroaches. I bought all the things I knew one ought to read and many of them I did read, too, but some have been on my not-yet shelf for years now. I packed most of the fantasy and sci-fi and so on away.
Suddenly there has been, book-wise, a reversion in the brain, a return to fantasy and what Mrs. Butler called "beach reads," and between you and me I blame the hair. Here it is again, as long as my sophomore or junior year of high school when I used to view all the assigned reading with suspicion and made sure to see the movie first. Maybe it's time to embrace that old me, snarl-headed and flighty as she was. I still have the bike-chain bracelet, though the long black trenchcoat and the kazoo (which for a solid year I carried around, linty and irritating and why on earth?) have disappeared. I could revert to my old walk, too, sort of a loping stalk more elastic than whatever I've got going now. Already I have hour-long phone conversations with Michele every day. Already I live on a diet of bread and cheese again. Already I'm dating my high-school boyfriend. How far do we really go, when we set out to go so awfully far?
Posted by didofoot at 02:42 PM | Comments (7)
April 18, 2005
The porn shop for girls
Yesterday I went home, Pleasant Hill home, dad and the Moms home, Molly dog home, bees in the garden home, home-cooked meal home, driving home. How can I sell my car? Afternoon sunlight plus exceeding the speed limit is gold. It made me miss the suburbs, because even though I can walk to the bagel shop and the video shop and the flower shop and the hardware shop and the dessert shop and the clothes shop and the shoe shop and the burrito shop and the porn shop for boys and the porn shop for girls any time I want, I don't really. All that much. Whereas in the suburbs I can drive and drive and drive, even though there's nowhere especially to go. Driving means singing, too, which I can no longer do on the bike since I got the new head-fitting, acoustics-dampening helmet. I never thought I would miss my Parkinson's head.
I saw my grandfather too, always a bittersweet pleasure, except the pleasure part, and except the sweet part also. The Sicilian used to talk about and to his grandfather in a beautiful way, but then his grandfather sounded like Henry Miller (do you recall). I always admired that, their relationship. When I talk about my grandfather I wrap up into a tight beetle shell, old womanish, downright mean. I want to be someone who holds blood ties sacred, and while I am making wishes I wish I was someone who swept the floor more often too, because our dust bunnies are Harvey-sized now. I struggle to be a good (clean) person. The Moms does it so effortlessly. But then, she has a cleaning woman, so maybe once a week too someone comes in and cleans her head like Mrs. Darling does for the children in Peter Pan.
Posted by didofoot at 06:15 PM | Comments (2)
April 16, 2005
Mama Cow Man and other stories
I write in capital letters. My cursive was never good for much. Between second and third grade I switched from an experimental hippie-type classroom where we were encouraged to get on with the important business of school--in my case, reading whatever I could get my hands on, puzzling through math problems because they were interesting, writing stories--to an ordinary rank-and-file class where the chief activity was Education. It turned out most kids had gotten a jump on good handwriting while I was busy reading books way beyond my recommended level. Anyway, my teacher was, I think, annoyed by my lack of skill (extra work for her, I guess, so who can blame her?) and her teaching style, largely based in humiliating errant kids in front of their peers, pretty much froze my cursive right where it was. I even sign checks in block letters now, because otherwise my writing is full of the uncertain loops and careful peaks and valleys of an eight year old.
Anyway, I went on struggling with my choice between cursive that looked like someone was trying to force a devil-minded left-handed child to write with the hand of God, and a printing style that was more or less the same. What saved me was Michele. The first time she spent the night at my house, she brought a strange new form of fiction called (though I didn't know it at the time) British comic fantasy--Terry Pratchett's Mort, in fact. One of the main characters is the Grim Reaper, who speaks in blocky all-capitals. He had a horse named Binky. This was the funniest thing sixth-grade me had ever heard of.
I spent a lot of time after that writing notes to Michele in the voice of Terry Pratchett's Grim Reaper, and eventually his writing became mine all the time. On the one hand, it's sort of morbid to have transformed myself into Death. On the other hand, it beats being transformed into any of the other voices I used when writing notes to Michele (a caveman; an idiot cultist named Brother Dimbulb; a cheese who addressed Michele as Mama Cow Man for some reason, etc.).
I don't know why I felt compelled to write all this down, except that now that I've seen the header of this post, I know what the title of my autobiography should be.
Posted by didofoot at 05:21 PM | Comments (2)
April 13, 2005
hair then eyeball
I slept like a desert last night, shifting and rolling. More dog dreams. My mother's dogs multiplied to two and then three. We left poor Molly at home and took the other two on a night walk; another nervous black lab, skinny and clenched, and a curly mutt with more hair than eyeball. We set off down the street, a street I often fly along in dreams (a running motion, but crouched, paddling over the pavement to maintain momentum), and my mother ran on ahead. I could barely keep up. My shifting dog (German shepherd, hound) kept darting into the heavy traffic. "Turn your lights on!" I yelled, exasperated.
Sometimes a dog is just a dog, but I don't think that's the case now. I'm waiting in these dreams for the dogs to stand up on hind legs, remove dog faces, become an ex-boyfriend or a missing person or a grandmother. So far they stubbornly remain dogs, tugging the leash and talking about their dinners, but if I keep an eye out they're sure to slip up eventually and then I'll know...well, something.
Posted by didofoot at 02:50 PM | Comments (1)
April 04, 2005
Hey.
I've been dreaming of talking dogs. First I took a train to Paris with Roxie and we chatted about our trip, then last night I was trying to give Molly her dinner and she was insisting that she is always allowed to have salmon. Is she lying, I wondered, but then thought of course not, dogs don't lie. All my dreams have been active lately. I walk around in my sleep; my legs churn up the blankets; I roll both ways before crossing the street. Today I'm exhausted from all this traveling and conversation.
The title of this post, if you're wondering, is the only word Roxie was ever known to say in waking life, and she only said it once when she wanted to go out and no one would get out of bed.
Posted by didofoot at 03:15 PM | Comments (2)
April 01, 2005
There are shouldn'ts and shoulds
One of my professors likes to remind the class that our favorite authors would not have liked us, had we ever met. "Don't kid yourselves," he says, "Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen would not be your friends. They would not invite you round for tea. You are uncouth youthful boors from the underclasses and these women would find you repellent."
I just finished watching an hour-long video interview with my best friend Anais Nin and have realized that I would never have been her best friend, not in a million years. I can hear her reading the entry about me aloud in her furry accent: "Have just met an aspiring writer. She has been packed half-full of science by her lover and does not understand the self, the vital internal self, the rich tapestry of the unconscious. She sneers at analysis. Every writer must undergo analysis, especially a woman, whose power comes from her deeper self. Also, she dresses like a schoolchild."
It's true, I'm neither fish nor fowl these days. And if I go over completely to this fully rational world of the Woods, how can I remain my mother's daughter, when our family legends read like a magical realism novel? How can I remain the literary daughter of Anais Nin? I'm making a move to throw off this half-worn mantle of reason. Back to massage school, back to D.H. Lawrence, back to Anais, back to crystals. I can't live in the Woods.
[I still live with a Wood though. Stay tuned for Healing Energy vs. Richard Dawkins train wrecks.]
Posted by didofoot at 06:35 PM | Comments (0)
