The Softer Side of Smut

I ran across this article in Relevant about emotional pornography. That title was an immediate draw, because I thought I knew exactly where the author would be headed, and I was so there. But then I began to read and reflect and look over the comments and realized I am not so much there after all. In the end, I’m not sure the article is even in the ballpark, much less hitting the target (mixed metaphor – so bite me).

First, the author’s eschewal of Glee just gives me the giggles. We aren’t supposed to root for the husband to cheat on his deceitful, manipulative, narcissistic, bat-shit crazy wife? Oh, sorry, my evil sin nature is showing. I’ll have to remember the next time I watch Camelot to avert my eyes from Guinevere and Lancelot. No, perhaps I should just switch the channel, because this evil musical seems to be – gasp – sympathetic to Guinevere’s illicit love! Oh, right, Camelot probably is part of the problem as the article paints it, being about fantasy, shining knights and all.

On the other hand, I do have an aversion to the emotionally turgid movies he alludes to and I’ve even thought of them the same way, as emotional pornography. The Bridges of Madison County, The Notebook, whatever else gets served up as a “chick flick.” Yep, I’d say that a lot of movies and books set up unrealistic expectations about romantic love. However, that’s been going on since the ideal of Courtly Love was all the rage in the Middle Ages. In the 18th and 19th centuries novels came in for a lot of criticism for promoting unrealistic expectations of love and life. Why? Well mostly because the novels were written by women and read by women, those sentimental, mentally unstable, hysterical women. I particularly like this line in the article “many girls never grow out of the idea that one day they will be rescued from reality by some magic and a fictitious prince.” I won’t even go into the irony of a Christian magazine talking about idealizing a magical, fictional prince. Instead I draw your attention to the focus on female delusion, which he tries to elide with an afterthought about men believing they are supposed to be the prince. Uh huh. Hey, is there a pattern here? Something about women – what women read and write and watch? Oh poor muddled women, put down that Twilight book at once. You have no idea the damage you’re doing. (I'm springboarding off the article now, as it nowhere mentions Twilight, although it comes in for plenty of discussion in the comments.)

Everyone points fingers at Stephenie Meyer. Boy do people love to tear apart her writing, her beliefs, her aesthetic – they are fuming that people (uh, teenage girls and their irresponsible moms) read and enjoy the Twilight series. Twilight is responsible for deluding populations of teenage girls into thinking that Edward is the epitome of desirable manhood. They begin to think there’s one right undead guy who will adore them and they’ll wait until they’re married and…oh wait, that sounds a lot like Christianity - God will reveal the right spouse for you and no one will get between the sheets until the honeymoon (and who’s a better undead spouse than Jesus?). So it’s Hollywood, not Christianity that sells THE wedding day? Are you kidding me? Aren’t they selling kids on how sacred sex is? So sacred that it must not happen before the ceremony with the white poofy dress and the tower of cake. Don’t you know that if you have sex before marriage it will be a disappointment? A demeaning experience? A soulless, heartless mockery you will regret the rest of your life? Because sex in marriage is a spiritual event, a holy event. You know the honeymoon has got to be OFF THE HOOK with all that build up. It’s not just a honeymoon, it’s a sacred rite. And marriage? Well, marriage is like the marriage of Christ and His Church.

That’s not unrealistic at all.

Poor Stephenie. Really, all her elements are in keeping with traditional vampire stories – sexual appetite, repression of desire, pursuit and resistance, heroic self-sacrifice, obsession – pretty transgressive stuff really, however you sweeten it - but she’s come in for such criticism. I’m not saying there’s nothing to criticize in her imaginary universe. There’s plenty to make you go “hmm.” But in case you didn’t get it, teenage girls and women in general are incapable of delineating the elements of fantasy fiction from reality. It’s all just one big luscious cake that they gobble down unquestioningly.

I’m a bit snarky there, but in truth, we (men and women both) do not question what we consume nearly enough.

I say let’s skip the novels playing the tropes of Romance and get down to the serious emotional pornography. We’ll start small, with the crap that is Precious Moments, designed to make you go all “awww, isn’t that just the cutest little wipsie bipsie?” Or, how about the “Christmas Shoes” song, carefully crafted to wring tears from the eyes of people who wouldn’t give a crap about a real child with no money, say a Mexican immigrant child with no money standing in the aisle of an Arizona Wal-Mart. Half of every Christian bookstore is full of emotionally rancid merchandise. The targets are so numerous and obvious I won’t bother to name them. They degrade human experience, make it cute or maudlin, easily digested.

Then, we can look at sporting events. Hockey, for example, with an audience salivating as they await the first outbreak of violence. Wrestling. During the Olympics, the endless nattering on about the mishaps, the dreadful mishaps that demolished the chances of X – no Olympic gold this year. All those hopes, dashed. Yummy.

If we want to talk about TV shows, forget about Glee, the show with a tart shell but a soft squishy center. Consider Spartacus: Blood and Sand, a show happy to deliver both graphic sex and enough graphic violence to make you think twice about eating before viewing. Are you thinking this is cynical pandering to a ravenous hunger for everything ugly, brutal and vicious, a blatant manipulation of the connection between violence and sexual arousal. Not at all - it’s authentic. We would be doing viewers a disservice if we toned it down. Those freaks screwed anything that moved, you know, and we do mean anything. And if they castrated their prisoners, by golly we will take one for the home team and let you experience genuine Roman perversion, just like the Romans experienced in the Coliseum! Thank God we didn’t live back then, huh?

Now many good Christians would balk at Spartacus anyway as too lewd. So how about 24 (ever popular among Christians), a show that all but does a tap dance of joy every time Jack Bauer gets the opportunity to torture someone? How many people watch it and consider how it mirrors a culture invested in the idea that it’s okay to torture sometimes – if you need the information, if your country is in danger, if you’re short of time? Jack’s a hero for leaping over those tiresome hurdles like due process and the Geneva Convention that let terrorists run amok. Jack Bauer could kick Edward Cullen’s undead ass.

Wow, our entire culture seems to slurp up a hearty helping of emotional pornography every day. It’s served up by TV and Fox News and, dare I say, church. How adept are we at recognizing it? Do we really look or do we choose our targets rather carefully?

Naw, I suppose the greatest enemy of genuine, realistic human relationships has got to be the Bridges of Madison County.

In the Church of the Great White Noise

Upon the summit I can see
The one I worshiped as a boy
The Creator, the Great White Noise

Last night Dear Husband and I went to see Owen Pallett (the most wonderful, most mind-blowing musician I have ever seen) in concert. The concert was held in a large ashtray. Or so it seemed. I smoked 2 packs and a cigarette never touched my lips. The large ashtray is a much loved bar/pub/venue called The Earle. The Earle looks just like such a place should look – grubby on the outside, with old concert posters crusting over the building face. It squats like a wino in a little parcel of newly renovated boutiques and shops. Earle had lost its sign, the waitress told me, when the last tornado went through. It sounded as there were no plans to replace it. A rusting bicycle hung from the ceiling for no apparent reason. The food was actually good (except for the French fries, which had the tang of old grease), and the waitress (who had impressive tattoos on both arms) was actually able to absorb the request for gluten free suggestions.

I don’t know why Dear Husband and I still arrive early to these events when no one bothers to show up until at least 20 minutes after the stated start time (which is still 10 minutes or so before the opening band actually starts), and often until the main act is onstage. But there we were, rattling around the empty room with a few other eager beavers. It was dim. It was shabby. It was relatively small. Stickers and posters covered most surfaces. Almost everyone was younger than us and were pretty much indistinguishable from each other. Definitely not the sort of audience that focused on being seen or looking hip, thankfully, as at these events I prefer to scuttle into a corner or pretend that I’m invisible. It became increasingly murky, with not even the scent of a clove cigarette to break the monotony.

Owen Pallett was magnificent. The songs on his most recent album are all backed by an orchestra, so he had to adapt them for a single violin with loop pedal and a guitarist/percussionist. What an incredible job he does with recording and playback, so that the sound is layered. I also really enjoy a musician who knows how to use a microphone without creating that hideous scratchy muffled sound that singers produce because they think they have to hold the mike somewhere near their tonsils, and who changes his distance from the mike when he increases the volume (why on earth don’t all singers do that?). He has a lovely voice, too. Magazines always refer to is as a “music school voice,” whatever that means. What does that mean, anyway? That it is trained rather than natural? Pretty?

There was a peculiar man in the audience. I’m not sure if he was high, or perhaps had been high so many times he was permanently affected, or if he had some unusual motor issue. Sometimes he held his hands in front of him as if he were about to take a dive into an imaginary pool, or perhaps launch into the Sun Salutation. Sometimes he took a shank of hair in each hand and made himself a set of horns. Sometimes he moved his hands to sculpt a cube from the air. And sometimes he shot his left arm straight up, jabbing at the air with his index finger, lowered it and then repeated the movement with his right arm. In the time-honored tradition of city dwellers, everyone studiously ignored him. Early in the show, when Mr. Trippy was particularly frisky, Owen did say, “I don’t mean to be rude, but I wish you’d stop doing that.” I’m not sure if that reined him in or if I just stopped noticing. Now and then I caught a bit of air sculpting. I assume that Owen entered into whatever musical zone he enters and stopped noticing as well.

Isn’t that cute? “I don’t mean to be rude, but…” I love Owen’s stage presence. He always says “Thank you” after each number, which is charming. He’s confident without being cocky about it. If he makes a mistake he acknowledges it with a laugh. He doesn’t try to be showy and seems perfectly comfortable being sort of geeky.

Dear Husband teases me because he thinks I’m besotted with everyone I get obsessed with. Owen has a British schoolboy appeal – very cute - but what I really feel is awe. The angels themselves can’t make more beautiful music. At least that’s how I feel listening to it. And to watch a musician play live, walking the tightrope of performance, leaping into space and then flying away, that’s a holy thing. This smoke-filled cave felt more holy than a church. Churches are filled with schmaltzy, cloying praise songs, three-point sermons and a utilitarian approach to the great mysteries. A true artist lives in the mystery.

Sadly, concerts are as ephemeral as cotton candy, melting quickly into memory. You chase the music and then it slips away with a regretful smile.

Flying

A small girl is outside on a warm day, a quilt on the grass where she can play with her toys - a phone with moving eyes and an orange receiver, that clicks when you dial a number; a blueberry colored dog that she loves because it is long and filled with small pellets that make it squishy and floppy. Then an airplane passes overhead with a sound that cracks open the sky. The small girl looks up and she feels suddenly that she is floating, that she is no longer quite there, there with the scratchy grass poking at her legs through the quilt, or her mother watching over her through the kitchen window. No longer definitely herself, with her shape that fits into certain clothes, that can hide in the linen cupboard or lie completely flat in the bath if she likes. Her heart, her insides feel funny, not bad funny but the sort of funny she feels when her daddy swings her up over his head, and then back down. She is moving beyond her own body somehow, as if what is inside is pressing gently through, flowing out into that bright sky with the beautiful ribbon of cloud trailing behind the silver plane.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

I’ve spent the last couple of days reading a nearly impenetrable article on Lacanian psychoanalysis. You know, for fun. Because I like nothing better than an intellectual challenge, except maybe reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, chocolate, music, sex and…well, I like lots of things more than an intellectual challenge, but while my mind was drifting along it happened to snag on Lacan and by golly I had an elite education that I’m still paying for and I was going to nail this sucker to the wall.

I am not a systematic learner. I skim and dip. I nibble. I can grasp some things quickly but superficially, particularly if I stay with secondary, pre-digested sources. I’m not a deep thinker, but I can be clever. I like shiny things. There’s nothing shinier than a mirror, and Lacan has a mirror. Plus I get to look at myself – my favorite subject.

But fuck it, I don’t understand this stuff. When you desire, you desire the other’s desire, which is their lack (something blah blah about castration). Oh, that should be the Other, not the other. The other is an object and the Other is a subject. I think. If you’re a pervert you deny desire and if you’re a neurotic you flee desire. Something like that. The pervert refuses to desire but torments the other (not the Other) by discovering his desire and refusing to fulfill it. The neurotic just freaks out at the uncertainty of what the Other might desire, and I guess bites his nails and plays Dungeons and Dragons.

I think it’s possible that French philosophers are full of shit, and they would be willing to discuss the metonymy of shit and its role in the current political structure as the shifting location of meaning. Then they would go out and smoke a lot of cigarettes, drink very strong coffee and sleep with undergraduates.

Me, Myself and I

When the child was a child,
Berries filled its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,
and do even now,
it had, on every mountaintop,
the longing for a higher mountain yet,
and in every city,
the longing for an even greater city,
and that is still so...

~Peter Handke

Besides watching episodes of this fascinating BBC teen drama Skins on Netflix (you'll be glad to know I'm using my time so wisely), I've been slowing turning over various thoughts. My mind is not like a rock tumbler - the stones don't come out polished and shiny. My thoughts are more like the clothes you forgot in the dryer, so wrinkled you need to put them back in the wash.

The wrinkled laundry includes: ambition and desire, artistic production, doubt and longing, God and creativity, God and desire, emotions versus values, and my stupid tooth. I'll get that last out of the way first - I had a root canal and now another tooth hurts. All expressions of deep sympathy are welcome. On the positive: I now have a bottle of Lortab.

I keep thinking about that Insurrection event. I've already mentioned Peter Rollins' take on doubt, which I found incredibly comforting and challenging at the same time. I've been practicing not leaping in to fix negative feelings. You know how therapists will tell you to rewrite the tape or recognize the distortion and rebut it? Well, I'm giving that up. My thoughts and emotions are what they are and if I try to correct them at every turn I'm just getting more enmeshed in myself. So, no beating up doubt with the cudgels of faith. I'm tired of always trying to soothe myself. No wonder my memory is crap - my eyes are pretty firmly fixed on myself.

At one point, he said something along the lines of "I desire your desire." At the moment he was alluding to the human need for approval, love, and admiration, but it made me think of God's desire for us. If we yearn for Him, he must also yearn for us. I guess that's Christianity 101, but it isn't something I get. It's like doubt, which we say is important and understandable but we really just tuck it away with the ugly Christmas present from Aunt Agnes. We act as if God were a frigid, purse-lipped missionary who drops by to say the occasional hello, leave some pamphlets, and check the sheets. Or perhaps as the smug and glib CEO who drops by on a Sunday morning to graciously receive our applause and drop a few inspirational words in our ear in return for dippy praise music. If God wants us, really wants us, that's kind of...weird. Why would He?

Desire, ambition, yearning, creativity. I desire your desire. I am reminded of that interminable book I read many years ago by Deleuze and Guattari, which spoke of desiring machines. I only read it because I had a crush on my lit crit professor. It was over my head, or full of crap, or both - something about production and schizophrenic capitalism. It was very French. But that in turn made me think of a friend who told me she got turned on listening to a lecture about Paul Ricoeur. I guess we all have our kinks. I tried reading Ricoeur and it did nothing for me. Which made me think about the excitement of ideas, because I actually totally get what she means. Why else did I have a crush on my lit crit prof anyway? He wasn't all that cute, but he was a purveyor of interesting ideas. That's why we have celebrities that people obsess about. If you hear music that completely floors you, that breaks open your heart, and there in front of you is the musician, that musician becomes the most desirable person on earth. You would like to be their best friend ever, or have their babies, or just a few hours in a motel, whatever. You think that surely God swept through that person, and maybe He's waiting there for you. Or at least I think like that. I have the urge to yank the divine out of the people I lust after admire.


He also talked about how the stories we tell don't always match up with how we actually are. The way we appear online, but also in person, is highly edited. Of course. Otherwise everyone would hate us. I have one story at work: straightforward creedal Christian, dry sense of humor, something of a scandalous past that I've fully repented. I know the lingo and I can use it. With others I would downplay the Christian part, because I'm way too cool for that. It's just decoration. In general I want people to think I'm witty, intelligent, a good writer, insightful. I'd rather be smart and clever than nice, but I would rather be nice than contradictory. I want everyone to like me. I desire your desire, only that sounds as if I want to sleep with you, which I don't. Well, some of you maybe. I reveal a lot about my weaknesses and foibles on here. But, in fact, I am the definition of "disingenuous." It is, I find, quite easy to deliver over parts of myself; I can transform them in the writing, give them a bit of panache, and it's all about me. I've always been fascinated with me, even when I've loathed my very existence.

Peter mentioned Columbo in connection with making the story told match the events that actually happened. Well, Columbo reminded me of the great film Wings of Desire, in which Peter Falk appears pretty much as his TV persona. There - desire again, the desire of angels to experience being human, which is the desire of humans to experience being human, the suspicion that this world should be heaven, because the leaves turn brilliant colors, and cats sleep in the sun, and there are paintings by Caravaggio and Rothko and poetry by Rumi, John Donne and Mary Oliver and music by Bach and Schoenberg and Owen Pallett. Shiraz and Chardonnay, strong coffee, chocolate chip cookies, romance and love and friendship. Heaven should be that, for everyone.

But the problem is, I'm all talk, and I really have to change that.

The Human Abstract

Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody Poor:
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we;

And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears:
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Caterpillar and Fly,
Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.

The Gods of the earth and sea,
Sought thro’ Nature to find this Tree
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain

~William Blake

In which Peter Rollins totally rocks, Dear Husband surprises me, and Netflix provides palliative care

I would like to say that during my blog absence I was pondering the deeper mysteries of life. What actually happened is that we received a CD from Netflix that allows us to download movies via our Wii. I've had a candy box of movies open before me, and I'm taking a bite out of everything. Don't bother watching The Passengers, by the way - totally lame. I am now working my way through the BBC teen drama series Skins.

On a more serious note, Dear Husband and I went to the Atlanta stop of Peter Rollins' Resurrection=Insurrection tour. I like Peter Rollins very much, and I'm still thinking about that event. What I found very profound was his statement that it is in the very midst of experiencing God's absence that God is most present. He used Jesus' "Why have you forsaken me" as an example. He also mentioned that churches don't appreciate doubt - it's all happy clappy affirmation. I wrote down this not quite direct quote: "Church as a desert in your oasis, not an oasis in the desert of your existence." I think this is connected with his statement that "God is the wound that births your yearning." Get rid of the painful yearning and you've pushed God aside. He also described how often we say doubt is important and necessary but in fact we let the institution believe for us. Oh, yeah, direct hit there. Oh, and then he answered complaints that his thinking would lead to denying the resurrection. He said that yes, he denies the resurrection every time he walks by someone who needs help without doing anything. Wow.

A little frustrating to me is the fact that Dear Husband actually cornered him and talked to him at length, whereas I only managed a quick "thanks oh so much I'm an idiot who thinks you are oh so swell and really hot and jeepers you actually gaze into people's eyes when you talk to them which is completely rattling me so I'll be off now." Uh, yeah. I'm a total dork around cute men with Irish accents.

Now, Dear Husband has always been the conservative, orthodox bulwark of our home. We've clashed on many an occasion. I've fussed and fumed about penal substitution and inerrancy and the focus on personal salvation. Well, you think you know someone and then they go and read Brian McLaren. All of a sudden half (or more)of what he has up to this point believed has been overturned and replaced with, well, pretty much what I believe. This is not as comforting as you might think (see above about letting institutions believe on your behalf). I've rather relied on Dear Husband as a foil to my fanciful theological pondering, attacks of doubt and general faithlessness. Now he's gone all emergent and progressive.

Easter itself was not quite as cool as the Rollins event, but the sun shone through the church windows (oh God I am so happy to go to a church that actually has windows), and we rang bells and shook key chains and some of the ladies had fantastical hats like something out of Dr. Suess. But this isn't our church. We don't have a church.

Now, I wonder what's on Netflix...

In which I decide that everything I do is wrong, and most likely will end in disaster

Oh dear Lord, why do I live my life in a friggin firestorm of anxiety? Today I feel like a fish who’s just found herself washed ashore and the tide going out.

Sample internal conversation:

Me 1: We’re going to lose our jobs and have no money and we’ll be forced to foreclose and live in a cardboard box under the overpass.

Me 2: Deep breath. These are emotions that come and go.

Me 1: What if Dear Husband dies? You know what you’re like – you freeze. Do you even know where your car insurance cards are? See, you’re screwed.

Me 2: Focus on the now.

Me 1: The now totally blows! I’m bored, and my eyes hurt. I need new glasses, and they cost a fortune. My vision’s so bad eventually there will be no glasses strong enough.

Me 2: What?

Me 1: And detached retinas. I’m at a very high risk for detached retinas. And there’s nothing I can do about it! There are no preventative measures!

Me 2: Maybe you should concentrate on finally setting up dental appointments for the girls.

Me 1: And orthodontics. Sure as anything Firecracker will have to get braces. How the hell are we going to afford braces? And they eat too much sugar. The dentist is going to secretly condemn me because I can’t figure out how to floss their teeth or teach them to do it themselves.

Me 2: Perhaps you should read a book over lunch break…

Me 1: Library fines – can you believe I had to pay over $30 in library fines? I’m so irresponsible and disorganized. And my house is impossible. I hate housework. The countertops are sticky. No matter how many times I wipe them, they’re always sticky. And the kitchen table is always piled with papers glued to the surface by pancake syrup. Which I really shouldn’t let the kids eat – real maple syrup has to be better for you, but it’s so expensive (remember the cardboard box). And now the doctor tells me they have to cut back on dairy products, which just reminds me that I’m a bad mother and my kids won’t eat anything because I haven’t, well, done something. I don’t know. Nothing works. They hate everything. They hate things they used to like. We’re going backwards. My kids are going to be fat and have rickets.

Me 2: You need a valium.

Me 1: Yes, I do. But I can’t even afford the medication I take. What if I’m on the wrong medication? Maybe my diagnoses are all wrong. What if I’m not really bipolar and instead managed to bamboozle the doctor because it really seemed that my symptoms fit and nothing else worked and then we threw in ADD but perhaps I’m just really lazy and don’t get enough sleep and both of those are over diagnosed because doctors like to diagnose you with stuff. And I think my mom was bipolar but who knows because she was in an institution in the 50s when they shocked everyone and put them on lithium and they said she was schizophrenic but then how did she get by without any meds at all? None, zilch, zero. And she swung like a pendulum. But I don’t – I’m not that bad, really. I just get depressed over and over. I don’t gamble, I don’t empty the bank account, I don’t stay up all night, I don’t think I can conquer the world (although sometimes I think I can drop the meds because it’s really okay, I’m really okay), and I don’t behave recklessly (unless you count the years of taking whatever drug was handed to me, getting drunk in unsavory situations, cutting myself, and that rather weird episode of unprotected sex with a series of men, which pretty much clinched matters for me because that was totally out of character for someone as generally uptight and painfully timid and anxious as I am, but at the time it just seemed rather free-spirited, and then just really really skeevy), and how do you know if your thoughts are racing if that is just the way they are and have been all your life? What would you compare it with? Doesn’t everyone think like that, with thoughts galloping across the plains? The speed of my thoughts feels normal. A little exhilarating sometimes, when I’m surfing them, but who wants slow thoughts, anyway? That’s the cold depths of depression, when thoughts are stiff-legged and lag behind. But it could just look suspiciously like bipolar, because that’s how I’ve arranged all my memories, now, whereas before they were all arranged for dysthemia and no one, no one, would have considered otherwise. Maybe because I lied a lot. I lie to therapists. I leave out stuff. I rearrange it. I exaggerate or understate. I actually understate a lot. If I’m really really ashamed of something, I never ever admit it, or it takes years, or I honestly don’t think it’s relevant even if it shaped me in some way. Being bisexual, for instance. I don’t mention that. Is it relevant? I don’t know. Maybe I’m not really. I mean, sheesh, I’m married here. Maybe I just hang onto that identity for some unknown reason, because it’s kind of cool to be secretly different even though it has zilch impact on my life now, except that I find it hard to imagine being completely straight. How can you be completely one way or the other? How can you find one gender undesirable? What exactly is that like, anyway?

Me 2: Do you even hear yourself?

Me 1: I hear almost no one else, because I’m totally self-centered and don’t know how not to be, because here I am with myself, keeping myself company, and whatever I do, I’m stuck in here, worrying that I’m not very giving and can’t seem to make friends and I talk a lot about compassion blah blah blah but I never really do anything, unless you count writing to my congressman twice or making donations doing something, and the only thing I’ve ever done at church was work in the nursery sometimes, because I feel really weird trying to do volunteer work, everyone else is so genuine and caring and I’m cold and remote. Trust issues you know, fear of commitment, which is why I don’t make friends. I don’t want anyone to know me, at least not the people I meet now. I’m afraid I’ll be exposed for a fraud and lose my job. And how the hell did I end up working for a denomination that partners with organizations that try to “cure” gay people? WTF? That’s not me. That’s an abomination. But here I am, 100% cynical skeptic working for people who believe in 5 point Calvinism.

Me 2: Are you done yet?

Me 1: Yes, I think so for now, because I have cherry nougats.

School Bus - 1977

On the way to work today I heard the song "Fly Like an Eagle" by the Steve Miller Band. In a flash I remembered sitting on a school bus in fifth grade and hearing the song over the bus’s radio, which the driver had obligingly turned up for us. It was the sort of song that made me feel odd, as if I had suddenly acquired a vision of infinite wisdom that I couldn’t communicate. The school bus smelled of warm vinyl bus seats. We were on our way back from a misguided enrichment class put together for the good students. This was the 70s, and even in the backwater I lived in, some loopy educational programs leaked in. I remember making candles, learning to count to 10 in Spanish, and eating churros. Making the candles was great, although mine looked crooked and lumpy. Melted wax has a very comforting smell. If I actually learned anything substantive, I don’t remember it.


Anyway, we were on the bus with 'Fly Like an Eagle" on the radio. Stephen Walker (I still remember his name) was turned around in the seat in front of me, making some sort of withering commentary. He was a skinny kid with long dirty blond hair that he wore in a ponytail. Sometimes I saw him riding his bike to school – one-handed or no-handed, of course. He was the most sarcastic person I had ever known, and I was filled with awe and admiration. I was also rather scared of him, since it was no fun to be the recipient of one of his verbal barbs. I remember an art project in which we made placemats for our family members, decorated with drawings that said something about that person’s life. He took one look at my mom’s placemat, which I recall had a drawing of a vacuum cleaner and cooking pots, and sneered, “I guess your mom doesn’t work.” Of course I knew women weren’t just housewives, but I hadn’t considered what it would be like to have a mom who worked at a job. My mom was pretty much incapable of holding a job. Given that I had already vastly inflated my mom’s housekeeping skills (I had to draw something, after all), I suddenly felt deficient. My mom didn’t work.


I don’t know what became of Stephen Walker. After fifth grade, my mom put me in a private school, to keep me away from the “bad elements” in the local public schools. That was code for “black people,” but also demonstrated a bit of class snobbery. My parents were from a very humble background, but my mom, at least, was determined to impress upon me the importance of taste, intelligence, and keeping the right sort of company. She did this to counter the "trashiness" of my dad's side of the family. Thanks to my mom I don't live in a trailer on the front lawn of my parent's house, with a meth lab, a skoal chewing husband, a shotgun and two grimy children.

I'm Waiting

I am not the sort of person who lives with stories crowded in her head and characters shouting for attention. I do not. It is not like that inside me. The rooms are quiet, dust motes floating through sunlit air, and I walk them, sometimes bored, sometimes peaceful, and other times I walk an abandoned soot-choked city with no stars. But sometimes I am visited by an unexpected urge to write. I don’t know what about. I have to wait. My soul is looking for some story or image it wants to speak through and is disturbed by the expansive expectations of the first days of spring. Buds are unfolding, the air is softening, but the season is restless. When? it asks, over and over.

Some think that creating channels the divine. It’s the sort of thought you entertain after the fact, or when you are confronted with some extraordinary work of art and your heart gallops away in a fever of love and desire. Surely, surely, surely God has marked this writer or painter or musician, because he or she awakens a longing so strong it can’t be sated by drink or drugs or sex, a longing that goes on and on and feels like a penalty as much as a pleasure. When I create, it doesn’t feel divine. It is like finally finding out how those maddening pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fit together. The pleasure of discovering and resolving a pattern. Stories may never resolve, but the writing of them does.

And then, so soon after, the craving.

Good Times, Bad Times

The more you don't write, the more nothing there is to not write about.

I have a new car. And by "new" I mean "used." My Sedona finally stuck out its tongue at me one too many times. I love my new used car. It reminds me of the cute little Neon I drove when I was young.

Firecracker had her yearly brain MRI, which made me feel weepy. But it doesn't change anything, so I'm back to sneaking peeks at this illness from the corner of my eye.

A rather annoying situation at church has developed. Dear Husband was working on a Seder and was feeling that the church was not very supportive and hardly anyone was registering, so he thought he should back out. He was so miserable that I thought it the best course. Well, that resulted in a mean spirited and unprofessional email from one of the staff. As a result he's been feeling pretty wretched, but the response didn't make him feel like sticking around, that's for sure. Now the church wants us to write some sort of letter airing our concerns. Jolly.

The 4000th episode of Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden has come and gone, yet the angst remains. Lucas and Noud are still star-crossed, and I fear I will be stuck in this tangled story line until Christmas. Please note: never undertake a building project alone, at night, in an abandoned sanitarium, with a flashlight the size of a pickling cucumber, and be assured that those odd noises you hear are the sounds of someone sneaking about for an inexplicably long time instead of just jumping out and slitting your throat right away. Finally, keep your bloody cell phone on your person. If you are concerned that there is a possibly dangerous someone lurking, don't think, "Hey, I'll just leave my cell phone here while I go investigate that noise upstairs. Meanwhile, why don't you leave your cell phone next to mine and head off in that direction and look for X, who has not been seen since she wandered off without her cell phone. See ya in a bit."

February 25

I feel like if I don’t write something soon, everyone will forget I’m here. Including me. Life seems full of holes at the moment, a bit ragged, and rather dull. Slumberous times, but not refreshing. I do things I don’t enjoy. I do things I usually enjoy but don’t enjoy now. I think enjoyment might require more energy than I have at the moment. It’s very difficult to let discomfort simply be, when it feels like a garrote wrapped around my neck. Perhaps I should stop trying to reassure myself. Why do I try to reassure myself? I’m very unconvincing. I live my life trying to pretend that I am not deeply afraid of: being alone, losing the people I love, being friendless, entering depression and never exiting, passing my mental problems along to my children, having no money, having no faith, living with Firecracker’s disease, looking for meaning and finding nothing, trying to create meaning and being stymied. Being me, just me, as in this is all there is – me anxious, floundering. There is no better me, no me with improved synapses and joie de vivre, no me who is more productive and less defective.

When I was younger, I used to think about being a mistake, that I was shoved into this world with some sort of ontological defect that prevented me from holding the world loosely rather than facing it stricken, as if it were coming after me with claws bared. More people than I realized feel this way, which isn’t much comfort, really. We are always busy leaping out of the way of the industrious, the ambitious, and the determined who think us weak and tiresome.

Some days my thoughts are like the sound of footsteps receding down an empty hallway.

The Mysterious JQ

Someone with the initials JQ has been going through my archives, leaving pleasant comments here and there. But the initials don’t link to a blogger profile.

Who are you, JQ? Do you have a blog somewhere? I appreciate you visiting and taking the time to leave messages. I haven’t left comments in response because I don’t have a decent computer at home for the moment, so I have to squeeze everything in during down times at work.

And in answer to one of your questions, I’ve heard of Ann Sebold, because of The Lovely Bones, but I haven’t read her. I suppose I should…

This Book Could Use a Better Writer

My Vitamin D levels are very low. My thyroid is a bit wonky. Perhaps that is why I feel so little inclination to do anything at all. I have reached a boring patch in the book, the lackluster part you have to slog through – no skipping ahead in this one – before the story picks up again.

Despite my complete lack of ambition, I have a story in a journal

To all my bloggy friends who aren't on Twitter or Facebook (these can just ignore this post), I have a story at Blue Print Review called "Coffee." I think I posted it on the blog some time ago, but now it looks all shiny and new. So stop by and have a look, and then look at the other works - it's an interesting issue.

So go have a look, because right now it feels as if I may never write anything again.

Resurrection = Insurrection: in which I prove once again that I'm incapable of serious thought

I think this floated by in my twitter stream. I don't know much about Peter Rollins, except that he wrote a book called The Orthodox Heretic and a book of parables. I've been on his blog a few times, and thought I was out of my depth. But, you know, it was hard to pass up a teaser like "Resurrection = Insurrection" (the tag line for his blog is "To believe is human; to doubt divine", which makes me want to get hold of his book). So I pressed play.




Resurrection = Insurrection

Great stuff - so much more interesting than the Westminster Catechism.

Now, what do you think my first thought was when I played this?

Do you want to know?

C'mon, guess.

Hit play yourself. You don't have to watch the whole thing (though it would be well worth your time).

*drums fingers*

*whistles*

Well?

My first thought was "Wow, he's hot." Yep. Here's this theologian delivering a really great message about Christ and transformation and my first thought is that he's cute and his accent slays me. My second thought was "Why the hell are they filming him leaning against a wall?" What is it with religious films and funky camera hijinks? I watched a series of videos in which the camera was positioned so that every speaker delivered his message to the air on my left. The director was determined that you were never going to see the speaker head-on. And then of course there are the Nooma videos, which I love but, you know, they have that self-conscious look to them, the "I'm a Christian but I'm not that sort of Christian who decorates with Precious Moments figurines and Thomas Kinkade prints." Which I fully appreciate, don't get me wrong. I'm a snob.

I'm not just a snob; I'm a shallow snob.

But, seriously, what he says about the narrative self and the true self has me thinking. It's a topic I've pondered a lot, particularly since I have one deliberately evasive "good Christian" narrative self for work and another for play and another when I want to appear intellectual (I'm so not spinning that narrative at the moment) and so on. If there is a true self (wow, that sounds really weird to someone raised on postmodernism) I'm not sure who she is. I don't think that I demonstrate love, unless love for my family counts. That seems very insular. I know I'm not participating in a global transformation, important as I think it is. When you get right down to it, I'm self-serving, self-focused, and self-centered, all of which I try to spin into amusing commentary.

Ha! And here's Lent right around the corner...

In the Slough

I’m still paddling around in the backwaters here, among the Spanish moss and gators. So far I’ve kept all my appendages, if not a balanced mind. I am two people at least. The one who goes to work and does homework with the kids and has this rather comfortable domestic life. Then there’s the one talking now, the doppelganger. She is navigating a swamp, alternately alert to lurking danger and lulled by the lapping of sludgy water against the boat. She’s liable to get eaten, because she is growing very bored.

Doldrums

Sigh. I am in the doldrums, and not a breath of fresh air to fill my sails. I’m trying to just let depression be what it is, since it is an inescapable part of the rhythm of my life. It won’t be here forever and it can huff and puff but thanks to modern medicine it can’t blow the house down. I hope.

But you know, it’s like having a cold. Yeah you can keep going and you aren’t dangerously ill, but your nose is rubbed raw and your throat hurts, nothing tastes good and you have to breathe through your mouth. It’s annoying, in other words, and gets in the way. Who can create a coherent plan when they’re sneezing and dabbing at their nose all the time? And complaining about it to anyone is about as entertaining as droning on about your cold symptoms.

Still. The symptoms drag at your consciousness all day long. They change the context for your goals and desires. Everything seems an enormous bother.

What is my deepest fear, the one that is always stirring the silt at the bottom of the pond? I think it is to be left alone, with no one, all social connections cut, the loss of every person who has helped define me. The fear of lack of desire. That’s horrible, to find yourself devoid of interest, with only the patterns of duty to keep you moving forward. One of the worst things about depression is the way that pleasure falls away, so that there is no particular reason to do any particular thing, and every decision seems an impossible riddle. I suppose this is why I cultivate my little obsessions, these hooks on which to hang my attention.

Sigh. At least the girls keep me anchored in reality.

Mansion, Apartment, Shack, House

I survived another birthday sleepover. This year DramaQueen had her sleepover at a hotel, one of Dear Husband’s inspired ideas. Ten year olds are still young enough to find hotels novel, and I didn’t have to clean up before or after. This hotel also had an indoor pool, which went a long way toward tiring the sweet things out.

Ten year old girls can have unbelievably shrill voices. In fact, they were sometimes pitched so high I’m surprised I could still hear them. I thought the sound would have entered that range only people under 20 can hear.

Of course, not every girl was a shrieker. We had a fascinating mix of personalities. There was the quiet, reserved girl who seemed to speak easily enough with the others but remained steadfastly polite and distant with me. The there was the girl who refused to stay up past her normal bedtime. It just wasn’t going to happen. She didn’t make a fuss about it. She just rolled out her sleeping bag and got in. I rather admire that self confidence. No one seemed to mind and they even chided each other for disturbing her (Forgotten in moments, of course. I finally sent her to the extra bed in my room). One girl was cute and rather quiet, until she went off like an alarm at mention of the Jonas Brothers and Justin Beiber, which brought forth some extraordinary squeals, and energized her for the rest of the evening. Another girl was perky and wholesome and reminded me of Bailey from the Suite Life On Deck (yes, I watch a lot of Disney) – a sort of iconic Midwestern girl. The final guest was the well-mannered and altogether wonderful BFF. If you could imagine the ideal friend for your daughter, P. would be that. I think I would use the term “well-bred.” I don’t think that’s essential to good character (God, I hope not, or we’re doomed), but it’s a lovely quality to find. Her family is polite and gracious, and it shows in the children, who are also polite and friendly and full of good humor.

We set up our computer to play music. Periodically the shy, reserved girl would call out, “DramaQueen, what song is this?” That would alert DramaQueen that something had gone horribly wrong, and she would race over to the laptop. “That’s my mom’s awful music!” And we would be back on track listening to Selena Gomez and Jordan Sparks.

They spent a lot of time playing a game called MASH, which I remember from my young days as something passed around in a spiral notebook. This version we paid about $10 dollars for, and consisted of a set of wipe-off cards with questions. MASH is a sort of fortune telling game. Even though I remember playing it, I’m pretty hazy on details. I just remember part of the game was listing potential husbands. Since the notebook was passed around, if you made the mistake of listing an actual real-life boy, you had to worry about them getting hold of the notebook. No doubt our version was lame. DramaQueen often looks at me with pity when I describe anything from my childhood. We were so deprived and had funny hair. If you’re dying to know more, you can go here for a full description.

At one point DramaQueen spilled a bunch of pop rocks on the carpet. This immediately galvanized the group, who decided to apply ice and see if they still popped. The experiment was a success and seemed to delight everyone. And here I was worried about party games. I noticed the next morning that all the spilled pop rocks had mysteriously vanished as if they had never existed. This is an example of God’s grace in action.

I brought stencils and gave all the girls tattoos. This was a great success and I recommend it to anyone else planning a birthday party for tweens. Manicures are so yesterday, but make them look like bikers in training and you have a hit. I did say no, however, when one of the girls asked for a tattoo around her bellybutton.

I discovered who was on team Jacob vs team Edward. Most, including DramaQueen, seemed to be on team Jacob. For those of you who’ve been asleep for the past few years not in the know, I’m talking about Twilight. Jacob is the werewolf and Edward is the vampire. This just goes to show that robust, well-muscled boys with long dark hair and no shirt will always win over skinny pasty-faced boys with floppy hair, however romantic. In general, though, DramaQueen’s response to boys is still “ewww!” Dear Husband thinks this is a front for a deeper curiosity. I don’t know. She looks genuinely baffled by the romance thing to me. And she doesn’t understand why anyone in their right mind would want to use their tongues when they kiss. I seem to remember wondering the same thing at 15 after my first kiss, but that’s another story.

I let them watch Star Trek, and in case any of the parents decided to sue me later, I made them close their eyes when Kirk was making out with the green chick. I could have chosen something rated G, but how boring is that? And this gave me the opportunity to ponder Zachary Quinto, who looks mighty fine even with pointy ears. No one made it to the end of the film. They all conked out around midnight. As I said, I was very happy about that swimming pool.

For the grand finale, Dear Husband brought donuts the next morning and the girls floated off with their parents on a sugar high.

A Minor Paradox

This is one of those days when I feel sure trouble is brewing. I must have a terminal illness. My children are being covertly stalked. A financial crisis of some sort is hiding stealthily in the wings. Something monumentally important has been forgotten, and it will be my fault.

Outside the sun is too bright. This is the time of year when crap happens under the unremittingly clear winter light. And all the memories of crap that has happened at this time of year slinks out of their hidey holes to remind me of the insecurity of all we hold dear.

The other night I dreamed that a crab attacked me. You wouldn’t think that a crab could be so menacing, but it kept coming after me. When I woke I first thought it was a very strange thing to dream about – why a crab? Then I thought of the astrological sign featuring a crab – Cancer.

This makes me think of how much I would prefer to not die. Ever. I like being around. If I have to die, I would like it to be of old age, and not after a punishing dose of chemotherapy, like my mom, or in a nasty auto crash, like my nephew.

I’ve got an investment now. I want to see my grandchildren. I want to see all the medical, scientific, and technological advances that the future will bring. It’s been very exciting so far. Every year brings some advance I’m glad I lived to see, or book, film, or song that I can’t believe the world did without.

I don’t find heaven more appealing than here. I’m lucky that heaven is pretty much here on earth for me, and it’s one of my besetting sins that I don’t make it so for others who know nothing of heaven on earth.

So there you have it. On the one hand I’m weary and pessimistic; on the other I rejoice that the world is turning and I’m still here to enjoy the rotation.

The year that was ... something or other

I was wondering if I should do one of those "year in review" type posts, and then I realized that I can barely remember last week. I could, of course, just make everything up, but happily I have my blog archives. They catalog the strange waxing and waning of my various fixations.

The Top Overwhelming Obsessions of 2009:

Twitter
Facebook
Supernatural
Misha Collins
Torchwood
Foreign soap operas
Writing (not obsessed enough, really)
Patrick Wolf
Owen Pallett

I don't enter a new year brimful of enthusiasm and resolutions. I enter grudgingly, with suspicion. I'm always a little nervous about what bizarre notion will next take hold, and just as worried that perhaps nothing will ever hold my attention again.

I fear the words are slinking away on their inky feet.

Black Dog, Black Turning Eyes

Do you remember the fairy tale "The Tinderbox"? I read the story as a child. I had no idea what a Tinderbox was, but I imagined a wooden box full of twigs. In reality it was a box with a flint and some sort of slow-burning material – what they used before they had matches. (I can see some sort of examination of the rise of industrialization that then resulted in "Little Matchstick Girl," also written by Hans Christian Anderson. That is one sad story. When I was 7 or so our ballet recital was "The Little Matchstick Girl." I was an angel who danced around the dying girl. My costume was blue with itchy feathers around the bodice.)

If you don’t know "The Tinderbox," you should go read it, because ol’ Hans was a rather humorous writer, even when talking about lopping off a witch’s head. To summarize, a young soldier meets a witch who asks him to chimmy down into a hollow tree and fetch her tinderbox. While he’s there he’s free to help himself to all the copper, silver and gold coins, which are guarded by three dogs with enormous eyes. When he gets out, he wants to know why the witch is so keen to get an old tinderbox. She’s snippy and he responds by slicing her head off. Those were the days before anger management.

He’s got tons of gold, so he heads off to live large in town, until he’s broke and has to live in a garret (but doesn’t write poetry) and all his friends abandon him. He’s hanging out in the dark and remembers there’s a candle in the tinderbox. He strikes the flint and who should appear but one of the dogs, ready to do his bidding. Of course he sends him out after more gold. Then the story goes on to an unapproachable princess, a narrow escape from death and the destruction of all the pesky people standing in his way. Basically, we have a parable about corporate America.

Or not. Fairytales are wonderfully adaptable. One of my favorite books of poetry is Anne Sexton’s Transformations, reinterpretations of classic fairytales. And then there’s Angela Carter’s sinister The Bloody Chamber. They are chock o' block with sex, despair, brutality, misogyny, injustice, revenge, depravity. Fairy tales are dark and mean. Just tonight Firecracker woke up from a bad dream about getting lost and a witch locking her in a cage. The world of fairy tales is sicker than Saw. Well, I haven’t seen Saw, but you know what I mean.

I had forgotten about "The Tinderbox" until I ran across a Patrick Wolf (yes, I’m on about him again) song of that title. It’s perfectly done – if ever a song sounded like a fairy tale, this is it. His lyrics eventually land on the desire for lasting love and, I think, for some inner spark of vitality. Which is probably why I'm thinking about it. The flint has to be struck over and over.

Merry Merry

1. We went to a candlelight service at an Episcopal church last night, and it was wonderful.

2. Dear Husband has been reading a book by Ann Rice and he says that after reading her descriptions of growing up Catholic, he gets why I find God in art and why I like liturgical services.

3. I have at least three Starbucks gift cards and a box of Starbucks Via, as well as two gift cards for bookstores. Sigh.

4. The girls each got Nintendo DSi consoles from grandparents. They have the cutest game I have ever seen - Nintendogs - with realistic dogs that you feed and play with. I sounded like I had been hitting the eggnog too much: Awww, that's so cute! Oh, that's just the cutest thing! Oh, look, he's rolling over! Oh, look at them eating!

5. Dear Husband made the most delicious ham I have ever had.

6. The girls and I each got Snuggies.

7. I got little black licorice scottie dogs.

8. The kugel turned out great even though I bought ricotta instead of cottage cheese. I have since found many many recipes from actual Jewish sources using ricotta rather than cottage cheese, so I know I'm not crazy. So there. There are as many variations of kugel as there are of "pasta with sauce." The MIL used rice noodles for Dear Husband, and I couldn't tell the difference. I suppose if you have enough cheese, sour cream and sugar, the noodles just have to sit there and be a bit chewy.

9. DramaQueen is determined to continue believing in Santa Clause. She was glued to NORAD watching his progress, and she decorated cookies, and put out crackers, carrots and water for the reindeer, as well as a message asking for a response. So of course I had to write a letter from Santa. This is the part of Christmas I will mourn passing. Nothing really expresses enchantment so much as a child awaiting Christmas.

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. I'm always a little sad when it's over and all the ornaments have to be packed away for another year. As I get older I begin to consider the losses that could accumulate in the coming year, the possibility of mortal illness, the pangs at watching my girls get older and wanting to snuggle them before they decide that's childish and they've outgrown all the kisses and cuddles.

I also really dislike New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. I always have. There's something about the start of a new year that makes my spirit tired and forlorn. I don't like my birthday, either, not because of growing older but because acknowledging my birth also makes me feel tired and forlorn. I suppose I've never felt very celebratory about being born. Speaking of which, DramaQueen's birthday approaches in January and then Firecracker's in February. Birthday parties mean tracking down nonresponders and fretting that no one will show up and worrying that everyone will be bored. I usually try to opt for venues where someone else runs the show, but I guess I'll be doing it this year, at least for DramaQueen.

Thank the Dear Lord that we are not doing Girl Scouts this year.

Gloria

Now, THIS is a Christmas Carol. Boy, it beats listening to Casting Crowns choke out O Come All Ye Faithful.



The sound is so beautiful and pure. It makes contemporary worship music sound like a drunken rattling of tin cans.

And perhaps I should next break out my collection of Gregorian Chants.



Sigh. They don't write 'em like that anymore.

Submission

Failure. Cummulative. Ontological. The details don’t matter. Only this matters. Failure traps my wrists in its cold hands and breathes ice into my mouth. My veins go numb, the blood sluggish. My eyes have fogged over. I am barely here. Then the slow glow of anger catches in my throat. The air vibrates. Imagine your lover brushing his lips across the skin of your inner arm, how it focuses your attention. I feel weak and urgent, the way you feel when you want to be kissed. I am in dissaray, my pulse struggling to find its voice. I have gripped rage hard and his response is swift. The flesh yields to the thin steel blade, and for a moment I’m giddy with relief and the sting of honest pain.

More violins, oh, and a bit of keyboard and orchestra some rain and stuff

Final Fantasy's new album Heartland is due out in early January. I'm fairly dancing with anticipation. I happened across this amazing video of Owen Pallett performing one of the songs from Heartland with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Damn, it's amazing.



And then I found a much better version of Many Lives 49MP. This song never ceases to thrill me. He makes a mistake at the end, quite charmingly.



Finally, I thought this was great. He's playing in the rain and won't stop until he's finished his song. I think this song is also from the forthcoming album. I heard him play it at the Atlanta concert. I love the refrain "I'm never going to give it to you" - he sang it directly at the audience.

formspring.me

What 5 people living or dead would you want to have dinner with?

Buster Keaton, Patrick Wolf, Owen Pallett, Franz Kafka, Frida Kahlo. I'll stick with the famous, as I would like to dine with most of my friends anyway. The list could change at any moment. In fact, it's probably changing this very moment...

Ask me anything

formspring.me

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/2tired2move

Bendy

I saw this over at MadPriest's blog:

"Grouping the sexuality of people under the terms gay and straight is a false dichotomy. For a start there are plenty of straight gay people around - if there weren't then there would hardly be a right wing in the Church to fight against.

A true dichotomy would be kinky and straight. Descriptively it is far more accurate and puts people into likeminded groupings (imaginative, creative sexual creatures in one camp - boring killjoys who might as well be dead already as they obviously hate the idea of actually being alive).

From roads to fjords to human beings, things are always far more interesting if they contain kinks, have crinkly edges and are downright bendy."

This made me laugh. He states a truth with such flair and humor. Isn’t this a much better division - the creative sexual creatures and the boring killjoys? I’ve often thought about this division into gay and straight. I've found that both camps want you to be very clear about where you stand. Bisexual is uneasily tolerated as a term for the people who just won’t get off the fence, because of course you should be one way or the other or you’re just kidding yourself.

Human sexuality is amazingly flexible. Whatever your preference, you can always surprise yourself. Unless of course you’ve given up on surprise entirely.

In any case, if Zachary Quinto shows up at my house, I’m not leaving him and Dear Husband alone in the same room. You never know.

Advent

I’ve been reading posts about Advent and wondering how to think about Christmas. I so dislike that little phrase “Jesus is the reason for the season.” If I am completely honest, I would not like Christmas nearly so much if there were not presents and trees, lights and decorations. Although I don’t like the relentless consumerism and marketing of the holidays, I really like many of the secular aspects of Christmas.

I’m not quite sure how to extract Christ from the sentimentalized narrative of events that I’m not sure even happened. Where I work, the thinking is that if the Virgin birth is not true, then Christianity falls apart. I don't know why. The story of a virgin birth really seems like something patched on later to explain how this man could be completely human and divine at the same time. But it’s a beautiful image – the soul of the world waiting for the divine to enter as one of its own, God binding himself in human flesh out of love for his creation, giving himself to his creation. Despite my prevarication, I don’t really feel hypocritical reciting the creed about Jesus being born of a virgin and that he died and rose again. I think so many things are true that aren’t literally true. Good fiction is true. Good poetry is true. And yet there may not be a single actual event in either. They transcend the literal and ascend to a world of – what? – archetypes? Platonic forms? The Christmas story is beautiful. It’s poetry, it may be fiction, it is a vision of what the world could be if we truly followed the law of love, it speaks of our greatest hope that humanity is good, because Jesus was a man and was good, because he championed the outcasts and afflicted, and we ourselves can nurture that goodness.

Dear Husband is frustrated at my lack of passion for Christ, as he puts it. He considers my sense of not fitting in to be of my own making. I do find it very difficult to engage. He loves our new pastor. I find his messages simplistic. Dear Husband thinks I'm antisocial. It's not that I don't think there are other people like me - I just don't think they're at our church. And, yes, I have my guard up based on what I hear people express. My husband fits comfortably into orthodoxy. He doesn't take issue with anything. When I hear our pastor say that doubt must be met with faith, I feel frustrated. It's like saying that hunger must be met with food, and yet the tables are bare. Dear Husband says I didn't really listen. Oh, but I did. I listened, hoping I would hear something startling. I am always hoping I will hear something that will touch me, stir me, invigorate me.

And that is why I am about to turn once again to a more formal style of worship. This next weekend I plan to visit an Episcopal church. I don't necessarily think that I feel completely comfortable there. I have so little experience with this style of worship. I've been to Episcopal/Anglican churches that were sadly out of touch. But I want to experience a little quiet veneration, a different rhythm, the Eucharist as a rite, ritual prayer. Dear Husband is beginning to think I'm a nonbeliever. In many people's opinion, I would be. Not in my own. I just feel tired.

A Brief Intermission

This blogging break brought to you by a raging sinus infection and a lack of inspiration. We hope to be back to our regular programming shortly.

Break Out Your Clove Cigarettes

This past weekend Dear Husband and I went to a concert. Much to my amazement I had discovered a musician before they came to town rather than after. It was like fate was whispering in my ear. Dear Husband went along because he’s a good sport. He and I do not usually share the same taste in music, so I considered this a loving sacrifice on his part. Kudos, sweetie. I owe you a basketball game.

When we drove into the parking lot I saw a young man hovering on the edge, talking into a cell phone. “Isn’t that - I mean, that looks just like him!” Dear Husband replied, “They all look like that.” And, indeed, a lot of young men there did have that sort of school-boyish look, with hair short in the back and floppy in the front. A lot of others looked like they spent their lives in comic book stores. When the show started, Dear Husband said, “Well, I guess that was him.” Oh well, not that I would have interrupted a cell phone call to ask for an autograph. I’m too well-bred.

Floppy Haired Guy was Final Fantasy (or Owen Pallett – they are one and the same). Owen Pallett is a talented violinist. He has done work for Arcade Fire and The Pet Shop Boys and some other people I’m not so familiar with. He’s also played onstage with my other favorite artist Patrick Wolf. His live performances are mesmerizing. In the studio he has a bunch of other musicians to support him. On stage he plays his violin into a loop pedal (ooo, new terminology), then replays and records over THAT, and then does some more (including creating percussion on his violin) and adds THAT to the mix, to create layers and layers of sound. Sometimes he sings into the violin. I was wiggly with amazement.

While he was playing I was almost certain of God's existence.




He wasn't the only act. There was also a singer who came on before him, with the unlikely name of Larkin Grimm. I haven’t found anything online that captures her voice live. It has an elemental force; perhaps she channels it directly from a volcanic fissure. My jaw might have hit the floor a few times. She moved seamlessly from normal singing into a sort of banshee wail. She was … unsettling. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out she was a voodoo priestess or the tormented ghost of an Appalachian mountain woman, or, well, just about anything except for a normal, run of the mill, person.




The main band was the Mountain Goats. I guess they’ve been around forever and done a dozen or so records, all of which have some sort of loopy concept. They have the sort of solid fan base of vegetarians and semi-hippie slacker types. Seriously, there was an overabundance of Birkenstocks in the audience and the pervasive scent of clove cigarettes. Their latest album is The Life of the World to Come, and all the songs are based in some way on a piece of scripture. They aren’t a Christian band by any means, but it seems the singer really likes to read the Bible. For fun.
Here is a song from the Mountain Goats called Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace. Not sure what's going on in this song, but it involves tying someone up, and you can't go wrong with that.

Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves

Here's the story: In 19th century England, a young woman, a gypsy and outcast, falls in love with the son of the parish priest. They are forbidden to marry and she dies of a broken heart (i.e. jumps off a cliff, takes poison, or pines away). Very romantic. It seems that Patrick Wolf ran across this story when researching his family background and finding a cross with the name Damaris among his ancestors' graves.

The explanation I've read about the story is a little confusing. I think he means the Anglican Church and not the Catholic Church, since the man was the son of a priest. Catholic priests may have been procreating for centuries, but they didn't usually publicly recognize their children and worry who they married. Also, if she were Catholic and had killed herself or if she were completely outside the faith, she wouldn't have been buried on consecrated ground with the rest of the family. I don't know if Anglicans have consecrated ground. You tell me.

But anyway, who cares. This is such a beautiful song and I think of Heathcliff and Catherine or Tess and what's his name. Different part of England, but it really reminds me of Wuthering Heights - the man crying out for his dead beloved.

Oh yeah, those cookies are HOT

Well, it’s that time of year – the holidays – when women’s magazines go all out to make you feel like the crappiest housewife/mom in the world provide you with helpful tips and delicious recipes for your Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities.

I think Good Housekeeping has a lot in common with Playboy. We’ve been socialized to look with concupiscence at photographs of a fat turkey with all the sides on a tastefully decorated table. If you are well-off or have a post-graduate degree, you read Martha Stewart or Real Simple. The Proletariat get off on All You. Good Housekeeping is somewhere in between. Interlarded with the articles on How I Survived Cancer and Skin Care Products that Really Work (in Real Simple that would be Extraordinary Uses for Ordinary Items and Decorating with Mercury Glass) are images of the Impossible. The Christmas edition of Good Housekeeping features a centerfold of elaborately decorated cutout cookies: snowflakes with royale icing, piping, and blue sugar that has somehow been coerced into sticking only to the piping; bells with silver dragees; candy canes with alternating bands of white frosting and red sugar. James McAvoy in a light dusting of powdered sugar. Oops - mind wandered a bit.

For some reason, the lower down the economic totem pole you go, the odder the projects, until you get confectionery constructed from white cake, fruit rollups, ice-cream cones, licorice laces, flattened gumdrops, rolls of Life Savers and toothpicks. Almost every “seasonal” dessert in All You reminds me of a Girl Scout Swap Meet – ingenuity devoted to the inconsequential.

Many glossy pages will cover holiday decorating and creating family traditions. You know, traditions such as Aunt Hester saying “Well, it’s an expensive gift” when your child does not display the appropriate enthusiasm and gratitude. The annual misbegotten children’s craft involving glitter. The cat throwing up after eating a roll of curly ribbon. Or, the traditional family greeting, “Where the hell is the tape?!”

I’ve found an article that describes how to create a lovely menorah from glass cylinders filled with blue glass pebbles and tapers. Do you know how many tapers you would go through in order to light these every night of Chanukah? Forty-four. Forty-four full-size tapers. You could buy out the entire candle section of your local Krogers.

Then there are the pages of gift suggestions – gifts under $50, gifts under $25 and so forth. Let me go snap up that little red-striped baby onesie so cunningly rolled into the shape of a lollipop - awwwww. This box of clever conversation starters! Nesting Christmas dolls! The newest children’s classic If You Give a Mouse an Assault Rifle! Vintage tampon cases! Stationary made by indigent Malaysian orphans from recycled candy wrappers! And you know, I’m not kidding about those tampon cases. They’re for real.

Meanwhile, the November edition of GQ features a chick with her boobs hanging out. Go figure.

Hey, I wrote something, and so did a bunch of people

Folks, I've been such a creative little critter.

Click here to read my story Sheol, which is on Metazen. Then look around because there are all sorts of interesting stories and poems there.

A few writers I've been reading lately:

Flawnt: he always writes something intriguing and unsettling.

I Must Be Off, a blog by Christopher Allen. He has adventures and misadventures.

Cat Sitting, by Frank Hinton, the editor of Metazen. This story had me in stitches.

Doodles and Words. By Cyn doesn't post enough. Make her post more.

Mental Music

I’ve been waking up with songs playing in my head. This is not the usual “I’ve got a song stuck in my head” sort of event. I’ve had that happen of course, sitting at my desk working and really annoyed that the tune of Poker Face keeps playing as background music and trying not to think of Lady GaGa, who makes me feel a little queasy.

I have never woken with a song cycling relentlessly through my head. Particularly not every bloody time I wake up, even if for just a moment in the middle of the night, or in response to a distress call from Firecracker. And it can’t be because I’m playing the same songs over and over. I played U2’s CD over and over for months and had peaceful nights. I ALWAYS play new music over and over. But now my sleep has a soundtrack.

I’m not even a musical person. I can’t play an instrument. I was pathetic at piano. My singing voice is just sad. I have no intuitive feel for music. I have emotional reactions to certain bands and songs, but I couldn’t tell you what key and I probably wouldn’t be able to pick out influences or have the language to describe, well, pretty much anything about a song.

But now I've got my own personal jukebox, all songs by Patrick Wolf. His music is burrowing insistently into my psyche. I'm walking around in a world of blackberries and thickets, doomed romances, mythical characters (Hi Theseus), shape shifters (Hello Vultures), towers, gypsies, bluebells, constellations, and pig farmers (yes, even pig farmers). What would it be like to have all that spring forth from your imagination?

It would be the best.

Hello Kitty Walks to Emmaus

Dear Husband is on his way back from Walk to Emmaus, so I suspect I won't have any time to post anything substantial. Firecracker in particular is eager to see her daddy again. She's had a few teary moments over the weekend. So if you want something to read, go back to Coffee and Renaissance, if you haven't already.

BTW, it seems Dear Husband was the only guy at the retreat with Hello Kitty bedsheets.

Nope, no post happening here.

Really.

Coffee (a little caffeinated fiction)

Another day of NaBloWriMo, which this late at night is starting to sound a bit obscene. I'm tired and I've been working on this fiction piece for too long.

So, post now, cringe later.


Coffee

I hate walking into restaurants and cafes by myself to meet someone. I always feel awkward, as if no one will claim me. I’m hanging on the threshold now for an agonizing few moments scanning the room until I see my friend.

“Hi!” she says, waving her cup at me.

“Hi.”

I’m always flustered. Why can’t I just be natural? Why does safety seem so fragile?

I order the first thing I can think of, because I get rattled when there are too many options.

“Have you heard from Lars?” she asks.

“Yes, he’s in London doing research at the British Museum. Then he’ll go to Cambridge. I get letters almost every day.”

And when there isn’t a letter I feel unmoored. I don’t believe he misses me really. He doesn’t need me, not the way I need him, to keep the world in place, to keep me from crashing.

“That’s sweet. Will you go over?”

“No money. He has a grant, but I don’t have enough saved, and no vacation.”

And I would be alone there, while he writes and researches with that single-mindedness I admire. It sucks to feel deficient. I would hate myself for not being bolder, for not setting my own course – Ireland, Scotland, the Hebrides, wherever. He would. He does. She has red hair, wavy red hair falling to her shoulders. I’ve always liked it, the way it glows in sunlight, how it springs against her cheek as she walks.

“How is Steve?” I ask.

Steve is a pill.

“We’re going on a trip this summer…”

Ah, matters have progressed. How…established. Serene, she always looks so serene. It’s hard to imagine her kissing Steve passionately, or undressing for him. The buttons on her blouse, would she undo them slowly, watching him, or

“That sounds great. I’m jealous.”

She always dresses modestly. She barely shows any skin at all, except where the neckline of her shirt collar opens slightly. Her skin is so pale, with just the faintest flush. She wears a delicate necklace, so delicate, light as breath, light as a feather or a soft kiss. A soft kiss there in the hollow of her throat.

“So how’s work?” I ask.

“Oh, I have a new project…”

She doesn’t use her hands much when she talks. She keeps them folded on the table, or touches the handle of her cup slightly, turning it in the saucer, or moves the salt shaker. It’s almost soothing. I imagine her hands are cool and that her touch is gentle.

“Do you want more?”

Shit. Idiot. You should have been listening.

“What?”

“Do you want more coffee?” And now I notice the server hovering impatiently.

“Sure. I guess.”

But how many have I had now? My legs feel jumpy. She’s never jumpy, never ruffled, never taken by surprise. I would like to.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to kick you. Um, what have you been reading?”

“I found this great novel…”

The third cup, or the tenth, I’ve lost count. Her eyes get very bright and lively when she talks about books. Green, with a ring of brown around the pupil. She has what I can only describe as a ladylike laugh, lips slightly parted, more a smile than a laugh. Lips slightly parted and I’m losing my way here

“You can borrow it when I’m done.”

“Absolutely, it sounds great. Thanks”

She slips off her jacket. It is getting warm, even with the overhead fans. Her arms are bare. She reaches up to tuck her bra strap back under the fabric. Black lingerie and yes, she sees you staring you complete idiot.

“Have, um, have you seen that new movie. Maybe we could go.”

“Sure, I’ll ask Steve.”

Goddam Steve to hell. Why did I drink so much coffee?

“You know, you should run away with me.”

She stops dead in the middle of whatever she was saying, and then laughs. “Lars wouldn’t like that very much.”

She is, after all, used to this, though I doubt she knows I am slowly unbuttoning her blouse, which is warm from her skin and I’m pulling her close so that her glorious red hair falls across my face when I kiss her, and then

“Thwarted again,” I say lightly.

I jump up so suddenly I bang my knee on the table and the cups rattle and several people turn around. “Ow. Sorry. I just need to go to the restroom. Too much coffee”

I stare at myself in the mirror. I look lifeless. I look futile. I feel flimsier than the airmail letters that Lars sends so regularly from England.

“I should go now. The stations near my place get sketchy at night.”

“Well it was great to see you.” She hugs me just long enough to demonstrate that she is open-minded yet inaccessible and smiles just a bit too much in her effort to be completely okay with me. If I were a man she would never speak to me again. Which just goes to show how insignificant a threat I am.

I walk off to catch the train. I turn the corner and as I pick up the pace I reach out my hand and drag my wrist across the rough brick wall. I can’t stop shaking. I really should have skipped that last cup.

Renaissance

I'm going to cheat a bit on this post something every day challenge. This is a poem written over two decades ago, inspired by a movie. I will be most impressed if you can guess which film.

Renaissance

The window frames her against a peaceful landscape,

then a flutter and her skirt trails down the stairs.

She walks through the city streets

past squawking birds, carts of fruit,

vegetables and herbs, through crowds

and noise and dirt into your studio.

She sits as he asks her to sit.

She is what he wants her to be –

Magdalen with her bottle of oil.


The artist says: “My life has been

one long orgiastic dismemberment.

I grind myself into the pigment. I leave

my fingerprints in the paint,

every moment of self-loss

countered with brutal control.

It’s perverted, this transubstantiation.

How can you compare flesh and blood

with oil and pigment? All art is against

lived experience.


Magdalen is dead, and her savior

died in stylized brutality

centuries ago if it happened at all.

My memories are a series of paintings,

every gesture balanced against another,

every dark with its seed of light.”


While he counts her fee,

she yawns and stretches after such long immobility.

Outside she pauses in the doorway,

hair blown against the peeling frame,

the steps into the street where

her skirt stirs little clouds of dust.

It was a jolly good time, it was

Day two of this MoBlo or whatever it's called and I'm already scrambling. Inspiration or copier toner hit me this afternoon and I suddenly thought: "I wonder if I can find that old house I lived in back in the Summer of '89" So I tried. I think that the image below is what I knew as Brokengall Cottage, Widbury Hill, Ware, Hertforshire.


I have a very poor memory. All sorts of things are jumbled up - the little tudor building overhanging High Street (or was that in Hertford?), the pub that served elderberry wine, the canal that ran past the maltings, carrying with it a very distinctive fermenting smell. Actually, I thought it smelled a lot like cocaine, which just goes to show that I've always been adept at merging the old and the new.

I lived in Brockengall Cottage with my girlfriend, a fellow who epitomized the term "bloke" and a possibly malnourished Scottish lass. Only the bloke had a car, so every morning I got up and walked to my workplace through, I kid you not, a barley field. For the life of me I can't remember the name of the place where I worked - some council office. I processed student transport applications. The other folks there were involved in other aspects of transportation. There was the young Irishman who answered the transport information line. I'm not sure why they put someone who had no idea where he was in charge of advising callers on the best route between Ware and Much Haddam or St. Albans or wherever. But he had a charming accent. Also in the office were two old gents who drove double decker buses in London during the Blitz. I should have listened more carefully to their stories. They spent a lot of time fielding frantic questions from the Irishman, because they had all the routes memorized. The old guys were terribly worried that I wasn't seeing enough of England. I was young and had different ideas about entertainment, i.e. sex had a higher priority than the Tower of London.

During lunch I went to the little canteen, which was, for some reason, vegetarian. They served spaghetti on toast, beans on toast, cheese on toast. Pretty much anything on toast. I usually got an apple, walnut and honey sandwich.

Funny that I don't remember much about getting back and forth from the cottage to work, except for the mornings it rained and the barley field turned to sludge. I don't remember the walk back at all. How odd.

I think I drank most of what I earned. That seemed to be what everyone did. A pound a pint. I used to get something called a Snakebite (is it still called that?), half lager and half cider. Sometimes I had lager and lime instead. Then we would stagger along High Street. How we got home I can't imagine. Must have been the bloke. Anyway, the British take that designated driver stuff seriously.

I have this reminder of those days, a poem I wrote after I returned to New York:

Brokengall Cottage

I hear rain. No, it’s the farmer burning
his field. Smoke drags
along the ground, snagging
like wool in the stubble.
The horse’s hooves explode
against the gate. Nothing happens.
The fence is sturdy.
He snorts and butts all morning.
Locked in their pens
the dogs yelp and stumble.

Night moths fly through open
windows and drown in glass of water.
In darkness I hold
the glass to the moonlight.
Half-awake I once swallowed a moth.
But it stayed down. It stayed put.

In the days of the plague
corpses from London were dumped in the marsh
between this town and the next.
A tangle of bones
braced against a weight of mud.
Above, the smooth slates
of water spread undisturbed.

I saw the Lady of Shallot pinioned
in hyper-reality, menaced by detail –
the jeweled flowers, the chiseled leaves,
her revelation somewhere to my right.
As always the point of focus
was outside my field of vision.

I think of her when I stand by the canal.
Underwater weeds splay
like a drowned woman’s hair.

New York uncoils in the dream, knives
and teeth tear at the wildflowers
in the hearth.
The floorboards creak
with an unknown weight.
The restless dogs nip and worry
something that squeals.
Outside the door I find a rabbit’s foot
and, further toward the road,
the deflated carcass.

The Art of Boxing

So I guess the idea of this blogging month is to post something every day about something that interests you. My first thought is, Do I have any interests? Or, have I already bored everyone at the cocktail party? I've talked at length about German soaps (an interest that has now expanded to Spanish, Dutch, South American, British, Romanian and Israeli soaps). I've posted my musical obsessions (Patrick Wolf still reigns at the moment, followed closely by The Editors). In fact, there aren't many obsessions I haven't culled. Now I'm left with the more muted "interests."

So, boxes. I'm fond of decorative and unusual boxes. I have nowhere to put them, so I have very few. But when I walk into Cost Plus or Pier One, I am attuned to the boxes. Carved wood boxes, small boxes of soapstone, boxes with mosaic inlay, boxes with cunning little drawers and velvet lining. A box is, well, a boxfull of potential, a mystery waiting to be tucked away.

Which brings me to Joseph Cornell. Can you imagine my delight when I discovered Joseph Cornell, the master artist of surrealist boxes?

I don't want someone tracking me down for copyright infringement, so just click here to see an example, and here to see a whole bunch of them. The Art Institute of Chicago has a big collection of Cornell boxes, and I've spent some happy times there soaking in their magic. One of my favorite poets, Charles Simic, wrote a volume of short essays about Cornell. The book is called Dime-store Alchemy, and I think that is a perfect description for Cornell's art.

Blah di blah

I guess there's some sort of bloggy challenge this month, to post every day. I've already missed the first of the month, but then it's typical for me to be late out of the gate. Actually, I'm stalled. Just sort of hanging out. I was working on writing two different things, and then I had one of those dreadful situations. I looked over them and they felt false, and not in a good way. And then I thought perhaps they were a bit too revealing, but also not in a good way. You know when you're cornered by someone who wants to tell you about their suppurating wound, you don't really relish their gift for vivid description.

So, really, there's partly a question of courage, because I'm avoiding looking at them, because they seem rather silly, and I have to carve out the bits that struck me as false without completely whitewashing everything. So that I look presentable.