The Habit of Being

So this is interesting, this falling in love occurrence. This isn't the so-called psychological "Transitional Object" thing, of which I have had about one thousand or so of, throughout my life, if you include all my pets and teddy bears and pillows shaped like Mr. Peanut as well the odd and not-so-odd men, women and children I have invested in throughout my life - - this is the Actual Love Thing, even if I am blogging about it for known and unknown eyes to see. I realize most people don't do this, but some people do, and I am one of them; I'm sure it would make most people nuts, but those are the people who stay well away from me, so they're okay and I'm okay. Sounds like a title of a book. I can tell this isn't purely infatuation because this doesn't always feel magnificent. Infatuation isn't real. That's why it feels so utterly terrific. I've been through infatuation once or twice and my imagination tells me it must feel like I've heard heroin feels - - profoundly, absolutely, fantastically, monumentally WOW. THIS feels good and swell and comfortable and sizzly and yahooey and a bunch of other words I don't intend to write down here. This feels interesting; fascinating, even. and it feels downright wonderful,often. It feels serious and significant. But it doesn't feel entirely blissful.

It just feels great.
But not all the time.
Sometimes it feels more than great.
And sometimes it feels comfortable and even normal.

We met on Match.com. I liked whatever it was he said. I liked his age. I liked his height. I liked his look. And, when I met him, I liked him. I liked his voice. I liked whatever it was he said, although for the life of me, I can't remember what it was. I can't remember what I said, either. He was late, I remember that. But he called. The second time we met I liked him even more - but I still can't remember what either one of us spoke about. He wanted a song, and I sang him a song. My eyes never left his, I remember that. Why do I blush when I write that line? Why do I continue to blush when I write this next line...nor did his eyes ever leave mine? The third time we met was at a birthday party in Seattle for him, his older cousin George.... and a nephew? I think it was a nephew,I'm not sure. I watched him with his thirty year old daughter. I watched him with his cousin, with his nieces, with each person with whom he engaged. I watched him like a hawk. I wore red cowboy boots and a skirt. And a top. He wore...a whitish shirt. And faded jeans. Blue jeans. He didn't eat much. Nor did he drink much. He spoke well and easily. Every once in awhile he touched my waist. Those little light touches men do. I liked that. Clearly, he knew how to be in a social situation with a woman at a party. that's a great skill for a man to have.

I'm not going to go on and on about this. I think I've done well saying this much. Every relationship creates its own habit of being. You laugh, you cry, you eat this, not that, rarely that, never that, you go to these markets, not those, you read these newspapers, invite these people over, hike here, not there, wake up and talk and cuddle for awhile or jump right up and get the day going, tolerate the clutter or don't, brush your teeth three times a day or two, get a pet or not, decide what's to be tolerated and what's not tolerable, decide what's appropriate and what's not, decide whether it's okay to feel badly or whether it's not okay to feel badly and on and on and on. Whether it's okay to give advice(personally, I hate it), decide whether it's okay to go to sleep while you're both watching your beloved's favorite movie. And more. And more-plus-more. By the way, while I'm on the advice thing, I just have to say that the worst piece of advice ever given has got to be "cheer up". And Ol' Man River, He Just Keeps Rollin' Along.

What I Could Tell You If I Told You

I could tell you that Aleister's voice matches his eyebrows. I could tell you that on Monday it took me three hours to get from Gorst to Bremerton's Mariott Hotel, where I checked in, ate MnMs for dinner and felt like Julia Childs personally rolled each one of those colored little pill-like things for me. I could tell you that yesterday I took 2,000 miligrams of prescription Ibuprofen in one fell swoop and felt nothing at all except pissed. I could tell you that I participated in a poetry reading created by Susan Sweetwater and, once again, heard her own terrific poetry and once more was honored to see her terrific encaustics. I could tell you that Alan met my wonderfully dear Dietz's, Susan Sweetwater, my best friend Christine and her husband Michael, my oldest daughter Kelly and my grandson Morgan, my grandson Aleister and his beloved mom Angela, my friend Robin and my dear friend Jennifer and her husband Michael. I could tell you I'm beginning a writer's class in January. Small. Free. I could tell that, less than twelve hours before a Thanksgiving to which I'd invited twenty people, including Kelly and Morgan, who were flying in from Sacramento, we hadn't had power here for three days, we made it. We did it. I mean, we didn't splice any wires together or anything, the power people put the power back together again, but we managed to cook the turkey and even the guests who still didn't have electricity managed to bring something delicious and we were all so glad to just BE together. I could tell you that I think I'm at least ten pounds fatter than I was before. I could tell you that I spent the night of the poetry reading at the Dietzs and Mel Dietz makes a FINE bed. I could tell you that Alan and I are trading weekends, he's here one weekend, I'm at his house near Olympia the next. He has a water view and a straight on view of Mount Rainier and who wants to give that up, and I;m thirty minutes away from Seattle (Bainbridgonian's call it "the City") and who wants to give THAT up?) so I'm crunching patients (no wrestling holds allowed but plenty of finely honed stacking goin' on).....and that I'm learning about bagels. There are bagels and there are bagels.

"On Island", as they say, there are apparently no bagels. There are packages that SAY they contain bagels, but they do not. Not REAL ones. Fake ones. Tough ones. Artificial ones. Too this. Too that. Not enough this. Or that. Ach, God! Nyah! Nyah! Are these bagels ever awful! I SPIT on these bagels! Spflit! Spflit! Olympia, now, Olympia has good bagels. Not as good as New York, not as good as Jersey (oh, my God, Jersey! Jersey!) but....good enough. Quite good enough, in some instances. My poor toaster, which I was given at my baby shower in 1965, was not a good enough toaster to toast ANY bagel, tasty or non-tasty. So I bought a second toaster, a toaster large enough for....well, apparently large enough for one bager. One. Singular. bagel. Which I took back (I DETEST returning things,) took myself to Macys (I HATE driving to Silverdale,) and bought a big ol' large-enough-for-TWO-WHOLE-DAMN-YOUR-HIDE-DON'T-LOOK-NOW-BESSIE-THE-CAVALRY-IS-COMING-INDUSTRIAL-SIZED-BAGEL-TOASTER-MACHINE. Now, ain't I the one?

Who has the best bagel toaster NOW, huh? Huh? HUH?

Yup. It ain't him.

Me.

Little ol' how-do-you-do-, I-wuz-born-in Silverdale-Washington, ME.

I COULD TELL YOU.

Last night we watched my favorite movie THE GODFATHER, which Alan had never seen. Which Alan had never seen. Which (did I say this before?) Alan had never seen. And there was one place where Michael Corleone, played by Robert DeNiro,(okay, sp) turned and said -- "No", only it came out sounding something like Alan's "no" - kind of like --"nya"--something like that - and we both caught it - and today Alan called and said he just sent Deniro some kind of legal-suit-form for stealing his "nya".....and I laughed.

I could tell you.

People tell me I look happier. Steadier. Realer. Calmer. My psychiatric supervisor has yanked me (okay, weaned me) off antidepressants I've been on since Jim died. I am most interested in all this. I AM happy, but I have NO idea what the hell it is people are talking about. What was I doing, walking around looking unhappy, unsteady, unreal and frenzied? Could no one have told me? I look ten pounds fatter, is what I look. Food will do that for you. Or maybe it's the bagel machine, I don't know.

Or maybe it's laughter.

I could tell you more but I'm tired and I need to go to bed.

Thanksgiving was fun. I made an apple pie with homemade pie crust. Homemade pie crust. Homemade pie crust. The kind I used to make all the time. The kind I will never make again. You hear me? Never make again. Alan's daughter, Star, is a star quality baker. I'll bet she has no trouble whatsoever making pie crust. She shoulda been here. I wouldn't have spent two hours throwing cold water on the pie dough, which lay there on my little kitchen island, looking as if it were having itself a little nervous breakdown.

Keep Hoping, and if you've lost all hope, try hopping.
Sayanara,
me

Better To Be A Baker

So yesterday I was talking to a woman in a local shop. She was describing a certain type of man to me, a kind of spooky, haunted, slightly red-neck-but-sexy guy--vague, a little ethereal, maybe smart, buried feelings,and....strange....and with strange friends....but she couldn't manage to describe the particular type of strangness....and my mind went to the film PARIS, TEXAS, and, more specifically, to the part Harry Dean Stanton played in that film, so I asked her...."Did you see the film, Paris Texas?" And she nodded Yes, and I went on, "Do you recall the man Harry Dean Stanton played?" and she half smiled and nodded her head Yes, and I asked, "Is he strange in that kind of way?" and the woman's smile became broader and she said, "I worked on two films with Harry Dean Stanton. I still have a silver bracelet he gave me. No, the man I'm talking about isn't nearly as strange as Harry Dean Stanton." So I said the usual Silverdale-Girl-From-The-Farm-Thing, which is, "YOU WORKED WITH HARRY DEAN STANTON?" and she said "Yes, that was right after I worked on BLOOD SIMPLE with the Frome Brothers," and I thought subtly sophisticated thoughts like: Wow. Golly. Gee Whiz. Holy Shit. I was afraid to ask her anything more for fear she might tell me she'd worked with Meryl Streep or Helen Mirren or somebody I really REALLY admired. Because too much admiration in one day is not good for a person.

And then I thought: hold it, kid. You KNOW you know that people are people. You KNOW you know that because you have lived among people for sixty-five years and worked intimately with people for twenty-six people. You have even worked with actors so famous that people in the waiting screamed when they saw them enter. SCREAMED. Not because they were scary, but because they were famous. Only, you knew them so well they were.....well, just people. "Just people". What a terrible thing to say. Whadda concept. And then I thought: fame must be shit. It just must be shit. Better to be a baker or a crane operator or a bank teller and not have to work with a persona, not have to jump developmental miles, not have to pretend to be more than you are, more mature than you are or more intelligent than you are or more "with it" than you are or more ANYTHING than you are......than to be famous. To live with that kind of shadow every day must be hell.

And then I thought: being anonymous is best. It's best, and you know it. It's best, you can count on it. It's best, you can put your money on it. And then I looked at the woman and said, "Hey, I'd like to see that bracelet sometime. Is it real silver?" And she smiled for the third time and said, "You know, actors are crazy people. We had to hold up the set for two whole days for Stanton. But the silver bracelet? Yeah, it's what's real." And I smiled back and said, "Well, wow."

"One more success like that and I'll sell my body to a medical institute."
-Groucho Marx in The Coconuts

The Dog in the Refrigerator

People, people, people, how I love them. Language, language, language. How I love it. How could I possibly ever want to retire? Cure, cure, cure. It happens! It occurs! Sure, I'm in the rowboat with them, but they're the ones rowing the hardest, they're the ones doing the revealing, they're the ones crying the fat tears and yelling and shouting and whispering and biting their lips and their fingernails. They're the ones saying things like:

"At least give me the dignity of rejecting myself first!"

or

"There just is not way you can be half drunk in a grocery store with a member of the opposite sex that isn't just be a capital terrific time!"

or

"He's like a goldfish in a fuckin' goldfish bowl - - in one ear and out the other!"

or

"See, because I'm not crazy, I don't use a scale."

or
"Pretending to be authentic is the new conformity."

or

"For someone to say 'It's not about you' when I'm dying here. It's like the narcissism of someone who's just been shot. You've got the whole world in your belly!"

or

"The baby boomers had the 60's and then they woke up a day later and realized there was shit on the windows and found a dead dog in the refrigerator and then they felt ashamed and they said 'never again in this gonna happen' and as a consequence they became politicians who feel they have to hide who they really are. If you were a baby boomer, in your older adult years you constantly have to take cover."

A Paper Airplane in A Bathtub

"How do you feel?" I asked my friend George yesterday, on the telephone. George lives in Bellevue and we've communicated daily ever since we met....what, a month ago? George taught himself Chinese and translated the Tao Te Ching. George knew Kerouac and Ginsberg and had coffee with Ferlinghetti and spoke with Brando and watched Auden come and go from somewhere to elsewhere. He's housebound now, on oxygen, and is the nly person I've ever met besides myself and maybe my first husband who has heard of the white blues singer Barbara Dane or the folksinger Hedy West. George and I have a grand time together in our letters which, although written on the computer, are, truly, letters. Anyway, so I asked George, I asked him "How are you feeling today, George?" and he answered, "Like a paper airplane in a bathtub."

The perfect Surrealistic reply.

I haven't been blogging because I lost my blogging password. I haven't been able to blog about Aleister, who informed me that every planet in the universe houses the very same stone faces as are on our own Easters Island, making them not our own at all. Or about how I managed to have a car wreck in my very own garage, nearly ripping off the car door, to the tune of $2,500. Okay, so I maimed my car but I saved the house behind me, owned by an elderly lady who sits with her back to the very wall I would have crashed into, had I allowed my car to keep on backing up at higher and higher speeds without me in it. That's all I have to say at this time. I had PLENTY to say when it happened. New news becomes old news and then, who cares? What use is it? Who wants it any more?

I haven't had a car for two weeks.

What have I been up to ? I sang a set of labor songs at a tavern in Everett on Eleanor Roosevelts Birthday. A grouping of musicians got together in order to form money for the Democrats AND a yearly scholarship for industrious students. I did that. I lost a friend. I gained a friend. I went walking with my new friend in the nearby Grand Forest, which is completely beautiful, amazing, magnificent. I'm looking forward to new walks, new places. This coming weekend I'm going with my friend to Oregon's Hood River, on the edge of Eastern Washington. We'll spend a couple nights in a hotel and walk and walk the paths my friend knows so well. I found my duck boots Jim bought me years ago. I found my slick yellow coat which, at a distance, makes me look like a sixth grader prepared to stop cars so the school buses can go.

I've eaten fresh bagels. I've bought a new toaster. I've eaten fresh rye bread.

I've been rereading Anais Nin's journals and Ferlinghetti, who wrote his poems mainly in the 1950's. I've been rewatching MADMEN. I've been dancing to regae: THE HARDER THEY FALL. I've been eating pistachios. Drinking a Spanish wine, a vintage called Temperanille. Exquisitely smooth. I am reading my own poems at Susan Sweetwater's art show on November 18, meaning I must write some poems on the topic of "Musing"....a lovely topic, yes? Yes. I've been playing around with color and cardboard. Soon I will begin a large project, a secret. Soon it will be my second Thanksgiving in this house. How do people do this? How do they go on?

Life loves life. Life wants to live.

So What IS IT With Doctors?

Got my cowgirl boots on today cuz I wanna KICK some ass! Had my brain scan, everything's good, no hidden tumors, like the doctor expected - - but, hey, doc, I still got this chronic pain thing goin' on....it's been four or five years so far and nothin's gettin' any better......and YOU'RE a neurologist, ain't that right?

N: "Yes, that's right."
ME: "So you happen to know a great deal about NERVES, right?"
N: "I do."
ME: "So I've told you the history of my severe pain, I've told you the history of the Big-Dog medication they've tried me on and how it doesn't work........"
N: "Yes, but those were PAIN pills, and you don't NEED pain pills. They won't work, not really."
ME: "So what WILL work?"
N: "It's very likely that an anti-inflammatory will work."
ME: "Yeah? So will you prescribe one for me?"
N: "No, your regular doctor should be prescribing those."
ME: "Why? You're a neurologist! You KNOW more than he does about these things!"
N: "Yes, but I don't PRESCRIBE anti-inflammatorys."
ME: "Look, I've been to my regular doctor several times, I've been to Dr. Green, I've been to Virginia Mason, I've been to the University of Washington......and nobody but you has mentioned anti-inflammatorys. So I'm pretty interested. So why can't you make an exception? I am sitting here right now, in great PAIN."
N: (Looking straight at me) "I know that, but I just don't prescribe that kind of medicine. Go confer with your regular doc."

So there you have it. In this country, men are more likely to be prescribed whatever they want, while women, 82% of whom are more likely than men to be given an antidepressant for pain instead of pain medication or other meds specific to their condition) - are less aggressive about getting what they want - or are dismissed as merely being hysterical.

Chronic pain is a toughie. Part of the curse ofchronic pain is that it sounds untrue to people who don't have pain. Patients grope at metaphors that seem melodramatic, both far-fetched and cliched. Author Elaine Scarry characterizes chronic pain as not only NOT a linguistic experience, but as a language-destroying-experience. Whatever pain achieves, it achieves in party through its unsharability, and it ensures this unsharability through its resistance to language," she writes."

Anyway. Brain good, pain bad. Boots pretty, but actually made for walking, not kicking. "Some days," says Anne Lamott, "the most we can hope for is to end up just a little less crazy than before. A little less lonely. A little less impatient."

When I left the neurologist's office, we were both rubbing our own foreheads, wearily, almost furtively, as if we had both been in the ring together and no winner had been announced.

Greetings from The Birthday Girl

For breakfast, I've just eaten a piece of frozen Pink Champagne Cake, the cake that you can only get at the old McGavin's Bakery bakery on Bremerton's Callow Avenue.
I love frozen cake; especially wedding cake, it's sublime. It's gotta be white with layers of white frosting. I forgive the pink frosting on the top of the McGavin's cake because it is, after all, named "PINK champagne cake". It fortifies me. It strengthens me for the day to come. I washed my hair and put it up in rollers. I am the only woman "On Island", I swear, who actually puts rollers in her hair. To top off the visual experience, I wrap a bright scarf around my head of rollers making me look as if A giant bee stung me in the head and my top blew up. The other day a friend took me to The Harbour Pub and I gladly went along, with rollers and a scarf on my head. A woman in a booth stared at me, or more specifically, she stared at my scarf so obviously and with so much interest that I smiled at her and said, "Yeah, I guess you don't see THIS much anymore, do ya?" When she asked, "See what?" I responded with, "Rollers on the top of a head", which sounded faintly like "Diamonds on the soles of her shoes." "Oh no!" the woman said, "I was thinking abut how exotic you look!" She smiled. I smiled broader than before. My friend smiled at me in a "See?" kind of smile. Everybody smiled. We sat down and ordered a bottle of wine.

That happened the other day, when I was younger. Today I am older, but even at this age I am not shy about the rollers in my hair. My hair is thick, thick, thick and needs to be overruled. It needs to be put in its place. It is a naughty schoolgirl who must be tamed. So. I tame it.

And this morning I made a pot of coffee from "Grounds for a Change", which is a catchy title, but a terrible coffee. The blend is "Agate Pass Blend", and DO NOT buy it, or else put only a few tablespoons of grounds in it, for "Grounds for a Change" has NO taste. it is vapid, ethereal, suffering coffee. I think it must have been either very cheap or very expensive, I don't remember now. These are the two extremes I go to - cheap or expensive. Sometimes I say, "Life is too short to not buy the best" and sometimes I say, "Life is too long to buy the more expensive!" It all balances itself out.

I know a man who doesn't own a dryer. He's certain that the reason all his clothes remain looking so swell (even his deceased father's clothes remain looking swell) is because he does not torture their cloth or threads in a dryer. He either hangs clothes outside or puts them up inside on racks. I am sure he is right and, indeed, I have more and more often been drying my own clothing by draping and shaping it over my furniture. So a blouse might come out looking like the back of a sofa. A pair of pants might end up looking like my kitchen stool. In this way, I am creating a new fashion style, wearing already interesting clothing in even more interesting ways, say, in the shape of various living room or kitchen furniture.

I am one yeara older today and I have a gorgeous bouquet of flowers at my side, sent by the Dietz's, our oldest "couple" friends. I do not mean "oldest" in the way of "their ages are higher than anybody else's", I mean it in the way of "we (meaning Jim and myself) have known them the longest. I am a year older and I love the Dietzs even more today than I did yesterday, I'm sure of it. My son sent me a beautiful and touching Japanese block print, meticulously glued to a piece of cardboard, with tiny precise holes pressed through the cardboard to hold precisely secured thread so that the print may be hung on the wall. He's been in jail for a few months and in the hospital for a goodly amount of time, so the fact that he would be able to find cardboard, some kind of device to cut the cardboard, thread (did he unravel it from a hospital sheet?) and the little print, is in itself a feat. A task of love. When you are a jailbird and you go to Harborview, you are watched closely by the policeman who stands watch outside the door. You can't just run blithely down the hall lopping cardboard, gluesticks, thread, scissors and art magazines into your bag. You don't have a bag. You can't run nowhere. You Stay In Your Bed and wonder how in the hell you are going to make a present for your mother. Kevin did it and I am touched. Over the years I have been the recipient of many, many such presents from various jails and penetentiaries around the country.

Last night my friend Robin gave me a bronze antique angel to hang on my bedroom wall, a Kewpie doll to stand amongst my upstairs bathroom-collection of other Kewpie dolls, a gorgoue turquoise and obsidian necklace and an antique cow. It is the antique cow I love the best.

Years ago, before my son became a bankrobber and went into the pen, he used to steal all my birthday and Christman presents from various antique stores. The things that especially caught his eye were small, antique animals, made of metal. Painted metal. I have, for years, always kept two shelves nailed into the walls of my kitchen filled with such articles. I don't believe I have ever received any gift from my son that came through more conventional means. I am neither bragging nor sniveling. This is a fact and it is somewhat an unusual fact. Robin has, though, added two antique animal-figures which have actually been paid for. With money. An entirely new trend.

And now it's time for me to go buy some champagne. For myself. Because I deserve it. I have managed to get to this new age by walking, running, falling, crawling, dancing and, sometimes, prancing. I intend to attain more age-mileage in the very same way. Happy Birthday, Kay. Let's buy some tulips, as well.