Lone star

I've been thinking about Stuart, and when I think of him, I always think of him laughing. Because he was from Georgia I've also been thinking about the South. I've never been there. I do know that Texas is not exactly the same as the South ... the South includes a lot of things, whereas Texas is TEXAS. But in my obligatory morning stroll through cyberspace I happened upon this terrible taxidermied "sculpture" of an actual stuffed armadillo, ostensibly drinking a bottle of beer, and it seemed like something that could be created only in the South ... and I think Stuart would have laughed if he saw it. The thought made me smile. So bottom's up and here's to you, Stu.

In other news, why can the women at the seventeen buck haircut place not understand that not everyone wants to have their hair shorter in the front than in the back? I barely escaped without bangs! Actually it's not that bad ... and she did let me look at it before I left, and I approved the cut and paid for it. But this morning after a shower it was plain to see that my hair is now a full three inches shorter in the front. All I wanted was a half inch trimmed off the bottom, all the way around. Grr. I guess that's why the haircuts are only seventeen bucks. I will not be going there again.

More rain last night—enough to wake me up, but not enough to get the creeks flowing. It's definitely fall though. Leaves changing, chilly mornings; I wore a sweater today for the first time this year. This weekend my favorite installation opens at our little museum here in town—the Day of the Dead exhibit. I want to do a little altar at home this year as well, with photos and flowers and candles, fruits and skulls and candy, cutout paper garlands .... There's been so much death close to me lately. Close, and not so close. Recently and a long time ago. It feels like good practice to honor these people with some beautiful decorations and spend a little time remembering them. I would like to think someone will do the same for me someday.

Dang, another post about death! Well, it's just that time of year, I guess. And actually, I love this time of year. It's a little different around here than other places I've lived, because here there's the usual autumn shutting down of growth, days getting darker, flowers fading, and so on—but then the rain returns, and a whole new world comes alive again. Brittle dusty leaves and parched brown hillsides give way to sweet green grass and mushrooms and camellias, new birds stopping by on their way to wherever else they're going, beautiful cool fresh air that smells like trees and clouds. It's such a relief after the relentless heat and glare of the last six months of summer.

This morning when I woke up there was a moment right before I opened my eyes when I thought I was in my old room again at my last house. Something about the smell of the air coming in through the window, maybe. I laid there for several minutes with my eyes closed, remembering everything I could about that place. I miss it.

Bagless

One of the lighter moments at that funeral the other day occurred when the first man to speak, a fellow metalworker and boilermaker who'd known the artist since art school, reached behind some bushes and lugged out an enormous canvas dufflebag. "I wanna show you all something," he said.

I was expecting him to maybe pull out some old tools they'd used together, or an early piece of art, or something like that. Instead, he reached in with both hands and then his whole body somehow fell all the way into the bag. There was a struggle ... and then he finally emerged holding a huge cardboard sign, covered in leopard print fake fur, in the shape of three letters: C - A - T.

"The cat's out of the bag now, man," he said.

Meaning, I suppose, that now our friend who died knows the answer to the question of what really happens after this life. It was a very 60's kind of moment, combining free expression of heartfelt feelings, philosophy, theater ... I loved the big gray mustache and wire-rimmed granny glasses of the guy who performed it.

Anyway. I'm bringing it up because today I let the cat at least peek its nose out of the bag of this blog, and told my brother it exists. Hi, Beans!

That's it for now. Gotta get back to work, and then home to the dogs. They've been freaking out a little since the boyfriend's been away. To compensate, I'm doping up their dog food with steak juice and little tiny slices of bacon, and giving them extra Milkbones.

Dream sequence

The last few days have been surreal. Sunday I went to yet another funeral, this time for a metal sculptor friend of a friend whom I knew only very slightly myself; I went as moral support and witness for my friend. We sat at a table in the shade with a very famous sculptor (also a friend of my friend) and his kids, eating ripe tomatoes and pomegranates and rough country bread baked in wood-fired ovens that were blazing away in the building behind just us at the back of this sort of artists' colony where he had been working for the last several years. His death was sudden but not totally unexpected. There was a simple ceremony, people standing to share memories, thoughts, feelings. I left wishing I'd made more of a point of knowing him while he was still here.

When I got home I checked my email, and found out that an old friend I knew in college had died the day before. A head-on collision, followed by six days unconscious in the hospital. It's strange to know he's gone, even though we hadn't been in touch for years. He was someone I would've been happy to hear from or see again, any time. I'll miss knowing he's around.

I don't like how I feel about this. Or rather, how I don't feel; after 20 years of no contact, I'm not feeling his death as much as I find myself thinking about it. For instance, I keep thinking about how, all those times when we'd be sitting in the living room of my old house in Utah, or cooking tomato sauce in that big old two-gallon pot, or listening to music together or talking or doing any of the things we used to do when we still knew each other—how all that time, the moment of this crash was out there waiting. For some reason I keep thinking of him in utero, and even before he was born, when he was just one tiny little egg cell inside his mother, when she was still in utero inside his grandmother ... because you know our lives are really much longer than just the time between our birth and our death. "The end is in the beginning, yet we go on." Who said that?

Anyway, I keep thinking about how at the moment that cell was formed, this moment was present. And how we're all hurtling toward that same moment in our own lives. It irritates me for some reason that it's considered morbid or negative to acknowledge this fact. It's not negative! And it feels important to remember it, every once in awhile ... not necessarily that I'm going to die, but that at this moment, I am in fact still alive. There's so much to be grateful for in that. And actually, coming back to Stuart, the friend who told me he was gone said he'd told her recently that he was really loving his life lately. Knowing that makes me happy.

So that was Sunday. On Monday morning I woke up at 3:15 a.m. to drive the boyfriend to SFO for a ridiculously early flight to the center of the continent, where he's doing a contract job this week. I'm almost never awake at that time, let alone driving on the freeway, and after I dropped him off I promptly lost my way back home. I had planned to drive straight back up 280 and be home in time to sleep a couple more hours before work. Instead, I found myself somehow back on 101, staring out across the black water at the lights of Oakland and thinking about an old boyfriend who lives there, whom I hope never to run into on the street or in the park or at the beach or anywhere else. Then the road rose up and I was negotiating a perilously narrow series of snakey overpasses that finally dumped me out in the middle of the eerily empty Mission, where each light magically changed to red at my approach and stayed red for the full two-minute (or whatever) cycle even though there was never another single car in sight (strangely beautiful, the city without cars). At the end of Mission Street I waited at another red light, staring at the clock on the ferry building as it moved from 4:59 to 5:00 to 5:01 ... then gliding silently past Pier 7, where that poor woman drowned her three children last week ... and then suddenly, somehow, making my way through Fisherman's Wharf. And then there were hills, and curves in the road, and then the dark bay again with the Golden Gate bridge blinking patiently in the murky distance ... and then the marina, and then finally the big sign that says "No toll northbound," and then the sweeping curve of road that lifts you back onto familiar ground again. And then the bridge, and Marin, and big giant trees in the fog and then, just as I pulled into my own driveway, the numbers on the dashboard blinking from 5:58 to 5:59—which meant that if I ran, I could still be back in bed by 6 a.m. But of course by then I was so adrenalized that I couldn't sleep.

I guess I still haven't quite recovered from the disturbance to my routine, because I've been feeling spacey and weird ever since. All day at work yesterday I held on through my exhaustion by telling myself I'd be out of there by 4:30, spend some time regrouping, and go to bed early. Then there was a server crash, and an emergency on the press, and then another emergency with some film that had been handled incorrectly, and the new night person needing help with one thing and another, and for some reason I was the only person still there to deal with any of it (even though none of it was in any way my responsibility), and by the time I got everything taken care of it was almost 8:00. Tonight was somewhat more normal—the last farmer's market of the season, followed by Nepalese food with the usual Tuesday night people—but I'm still feeling really out of it.

Anyway. Not to complain. I'm just feeling kind of strange. Somehow all those images of an empty, artificially lit San Francisco, and the darkness of the bay, and all the lights beyond it, keep swimming in front of my eyes. I keep wondering if that's what Atlanta looked like in the dark, at 3 in the morning, when Stuart's accident happened. The thought of it kept me awake while I was driving bleary-eyed across the city, and it's still keeping me awake. I can't get the picture out of my mind.

A milestone of sorts

Today is the first day I've noticed my pants feeling kind of loose around the waist and baggy in the butt. Finally! The boyfriend keeps reminding me to not think so much about the numbers on the scale (which are not going down as quickly as I would like), because by riding I'm also building muscle, which weighs more than fat. So the fact that I'm not getting lighter very fast, doesn't necessarily mean I'm not getting smaller.

Last night while I was writing about that party I was also watching Heart of Light, a really beautiful movie about change and destruction and reconciliation and redemption in the life of an Inughuit man and his community. It has everything— violence, tragedy, an epic odyssey into a mystical world .... Plus, everyone in it is from Greenland! I'm going to need to watch it again tonight, because it's the kind of movie that deserves my full attention.

But the reason I brought it up was that it contains a scene in which this topless woman is banging a drum and dancing in a stone hut out on the tundra, and she's so thin you can see all of her ribs. It made me wonder, when was the last time I saw my own ribs like that? I could not remember. Probably sometime in my 20s, before I started spending so much time at a desk.

Lately I've caught myself several times thinking that if I could only lose some of this weight, I would be magically restored to the same body I had when I was in college. I have to keep reminding myself that getting fat is not the only thing that's happened to me over the last 20 years! I've also gotten older.

Another movie I watched this week, as is my custom at this time of year, was Herzog's 1979 remake of Nosferatu, the most luscious and evocative vampire movie ever made. One of the characters in that movie (in a very small role) is this little old Roma woman who's hanging out at the remote mountain inn where Jonathan Harker stops on his way down the mountain after being chomped by the Count. She's so tiny and ancient and just ... opaque. Totally mysterious and self-contained. A whole lifetime of harsh experience in the Carpathian mountains ... I would love to be able to get inside the head of a very old person like that and take a look around. And I hope I'll be even just half as fabulous as that when I'm a hundred and ten years old.

At least my rhinestones looked good

Tonight, another opportunity to observe myself in an anxiety-inducing social situation: a reception for major donors to the nonprofit I'm on the board of. All day I fretted and fussed over it, knowing the clock was ticking ever closer to the moment I'd have to climb in the truck and head up the mountain to the "exclusive" winery at which this by-invitation-only event was to be held. I never know what to wear to these things, and always feel self-conscious, as if everyone there is going to instantly peg me as an imposter—someone whose presence there is questionable because I'm obviously not rich and have nothing to contribute but my insight, experience, time and labor. Not that these things are not valued. But everyone knows, especially at this kind of event, that sometimes all they really want from you is a big fat check.

So I drove to the beginning of the road, then veered off at the last moment into the parking lot of a little Mexican bakery where I sat for another half hour reading the voter's information booklet the Governator sent me in the mail, and talking to my agent on the phone about when I should expect the refund for the last few months of auto insurance I paid for the car I no longer own. Then I examined my wrinkles and pores in the rear view mirror for several minutes, put on some lipstick, plucked a couple of stray hairs, and read every single name and number in my cell phone. Finally I started the truck again (startling the little kid who'd just jumped out of the car parked next to me) and got back on the road.

Once I was there I realized I needn't have been so nervous about this one. These "big number" donors were not rich scary strangers, but mostly people I already knew in one way or another. Several of them were even friends. The winery was one of those incredible small family wineries that isn't open to the public except by appointment because it's tucked away in the hills at the end of a road that's too small for more than one car at a time to pass. It was beautiful—a huge stone and heavy timber barn-like building with modest, natural-looking landscaping and gorgeous views of the sunset over the vineyards, and of the mountains west of here, between our valley and the ocean. There was a nice little jazz combo and some yummy food (my favorite thing was ripe yellow and red figs with farmer's cheese, honey, and pecans), and wine, of course. I had an outstanding Pinot (all the rage now since that ridiculous movie came out earlier this year) in one of those big giant Riedel glasses.

All in all it was a nice evening. Except that when I see people who have so much, I want more, too. I want everything they have! I hate that feeling; it's like being eaten alive. And if I, with all my comforts and gadgets and little luxuries, can feel so consumed by that horrible hunger for more, how must people all over the world feel who are suffering from real poverty, literally starving to death? Aside from trying to learn and pay attention, and share what gifts I have, what is my place in all this? Maybe if I'm going to be raising funds, I should be raising them to meet more basic needs (although I would be willing to bet that most of the people at this event are also on the major donor lists of those kinds of organizations, as well). Something I can't help thinking about at the end of another evening of excess, however slight.

On a totally different topic, did I mention yet that I did finally ask the sheriff to visit our noisy neighbors with the all-night monster metal music? Well, I did. They were quiet for several weeks after that. But I just heard them starting up again, and it's almost 11 o'clock at night. Sigh. The sheriff said that if we want an officer to go out there more than once, we have to submit a formal, signed complaint, which the neighbors will be able to see—so they'll know it was us who ratted them out. I'm not going to do that. So, earplugs it is. At least until I think of a better solution. Perhaps a giftwrapped box of dog poop, mailed to them anonymously .... Or a polite note asking them to please keep it down after ten. Some of us need our beauty sleep.

Creepy crawly

There's a young bald guy who works at the cafe next to my office, and often as I'm walking back and forth between the printers and my desk I can see him through the windows that overlook the cafe patio, hanging out with his friends between customers.

Over the weekend he got a big spidery looking thing tattooed on the back of his neck. It startled me the first time I saw it, because I was so used to his neck being so clean and pink and pristine looking (though most of the rest of his body is already covered with ink). Today I was startled again because now the tattoo has reached the point where the scabs are starting to form, and it looks all rough and fuzzy and three-dimensional, almost like a real spider. Shiver.

This morning I finally remembered to bring the camera on my ride to work, to photograph those five creeks before they fill up again with water, which they are threatening to do any day now. I got pictures of only two of them before the battery died. Drat. And then, after I got into town, I rode past one of the Catholic elementary schools and the entire student body was out on the front lawn in their color-coded t-shirts (one color for each class, I presume), getting lined up for some kind of enormous group portrait. That would have made a great picture, too.

Anyway, I've got to get the camera thing going again. It was so much easier in the 90s, when I had a crappy toy digital camera that just plugged directly into the computer. Is anyone still reading this who used to read me then, when I used to do a new photo every day? I love the blogs I read that always have photos. If nothing else, I could subject my two loyal readers to occasional pictures of my adorable dog, and the fascinating items I find on the road on my rides around town.

Just do one thing different

Or two, or three or four.

In an effort to snap myself out of my recent funk, I have done the following:

1. Volunteered to join the executive committee of the board of directors I'm on. This means more meetings and more work, but it also means that instead of just reporting on my negligible fundraising activities, I now get to express opinions that may influence the direction the organization will be taking over the next few years, which is important to me because I'm not so sure I like where I think our new ED is trying to go with it. There are already plenty of arts organizations around here that pander to the wealthy elite. I want to make sure that as our organization grows, poor working folks (like me, though nobody else on the board seems to see me that way—little do they know) have MORE access to classes, scholarships, and other benefits we're trying to provide. Not less. I haven't taken a class there in three or four years, primarily because it's too expensive.

2. Accepted a couple more freelance jobs. One is to develop web content for a friend whose campaign I worked on last year, who's now kind of a politically influential person in town. I'm looking forward to doing some writing again, even if it is just basic business writing.

3. Called friends for drinks and dinner. Yeah, most people might not think this is such a big deal, but to me, it kind of is. So I did it. We're having Nepalese food tonight. Yum.

4. Searched for and found the backup CDs of my iTunes, reinstalled them, and, to celebrate, downloaded a bunch of old Bee Gees stuff from the Saturday Night Fever days. This is an album I wanted SO BAD when I was a kid, but I wasn't allowed to have it because my parents thought the movie was too risque. I spent countless hours listening to it anyway, at my friend Jenny's house. And now, finally, I have my own copy! I feel so ... adult.

Anyway. Small things. But sometimes small things are all you really need.

Rain

Last night it rained for the first time since ... I don't even remember when. May, maybe. That's something I don't like about the summers here—the complete and utter absence of rain. Everything gets so dry and dusty. The first rain always freshens things up a bit, and when it finally rains for real—not just the few little drops we had last night, much as I loved them, but a good hard drenching downpour—the whole world comes back to life within days. Tiny little fresh green grass sprouts up everywhere. I can't wait for that to happen.

Alas, it was sunny again today. I spent most of the day going through boxes of books in the garage. I got through seven boxes altogether, paring down the stacks book by book until I had filled three full boxes to take to the thrift store. Or somewhere. The books in those three boxes are all so good I kind of hate to just send them off to no man's land—I feel somehow responsible for them, like I should try to send them someplace where they're more likely to be found by people who need or appreciate them. Then again, surely this is just as possible at a thrift store as anywhere else.

I also set aside a fourth, smaller box to fill with books to return to their proper owners, and to send or give to friends I think might like them.

So slowly but surely I continue to divest myself of material possessions. As of today I've whittled a fully furnished two-bedroom house down to the books, my clothes, my bed, assorted electronics (iPod, cellphone, laptop, stereo, etc.), two metal boxes full of tools, one small and one large armoire, an old oak filing cabinet, an antique oak pub table, a small battered old pine farm table with a drawer in it, a lamp that was my grandmother's, several mirrors, several paintings, two book shelves, two boxes of art supplies, two boxes of kitchen things, and two giant willow baskets (also my grandmother's). Oh, and two bikes. I do seem to like things in twos.

This is not much stuff for a forty-year-old American to own. Although there's other stuff not on that list ... Tater's toys, plants, old electric fans, kitchen chairs, the useful odds and ends of everyday life. But not much that I'm really attached to.

It seems like I've been doing this for twenty years. Putting a home together, and then taking it apart. Gathering comfort and beauty, then throwing it all into the wind. Trying to settle in, then needing to escape. I don't think it's because I'm flaky or lack commitment. I think it's because I keep overestimating other people's willingness and ability to change. I keep believing in it (I tell myself) because I know from my own experience that change is possible. I've worked and studied and practiced, and I have made changes. But then I see myself once again in an untenable situation, trying to make it work ... and I wonder why I have so much faith in the possibility of change when I myself have found it so difficult to make the kind of changes that would allow me to live in a healthy relationship with a healthy, happy man.

When that stops seeming possible, all I really want is a clean, warm room with high ceilings and big windows, painted white, with long white curtains and clean wood floors and a comfortable place to sit. I would like to sit in a room like that forever, sometimes.

Oh blah, so maudlin, so dramatic. I'm so sick of drama! The truth is, I'm fine. Just feeling a little downtrodden. I need to get back to the bare bones again. Attend to my own life and release my expectations of others in order for them to do the same. Learning to remember that during times like this, and to actually do it, is one of the best changes I've made in my life.

The cheeziest

Wouldn't you know it: the day I decide to finally bag the blog, something happens that absolutely must be documented.

Tonight when I got home from work, there were two boxes of Kraft Velveeta Shells & Cheese on my bed. This is one of them. Please note the printing on the little sticker on the front of the box: "Contains Darker Cheese Sauce Than Usual."

The other night we were watching Alton Brown doing a show about macaroni and cheese, and I shocked and amazed the boyfriend by confessing to a secret preference for this exact product, even over the healthy homemade baked kind that Alton was putting together on tv—the kind he likes best. We argued the merits of each side, ending up by realizing that what we were really doing was defending our respective mothers' ways of making this classic comfort food. This makes sense, if you think about it. After all, the whole point of comfort food is that it should be comforting, and what could be more comforting than comfort food made exactly the way your original comfort food maker made it?

I had unravelled the mystery of his mom's magic recipe last summer, when I was trying to decide what frozen food item I would be taking with me to share with the rest of my camp at Burning Man. He suggested I make a double batch of macaroni and cheese, and that I call his mom to find out how she made it, because her special baked macaroni and cheese was the best in the world. I did call her, and found out that it was not a secret at all. She just used the recipe on the back of the bag of macaroni. I used it too, substituting some groovier cheeses for the plain cheddar called for in the recipe. I particularly remember grating up a bowl of the horseradish flavored Havarti with mustard seeds that I was so in love with last year (mmmm, maybe I should track some of that down again one of these days).

Knowing that her recipe was right off the box made me feel better about loving my own mom's way, which was simply to cook the macaroni and then stir melted Velveeta cheese into it. It might not be haute cuisine, but it's what I grew up with and it's still my favorite way to enjoy this dish. It's so salty and cheezy and good!

Anyway, it made me smile to see those boxes on my bed tonight. It's nice to be remembered like that. He must've bought them at the Petaluma Grocery Outlet, a store that carries all kinds of perfectly fine but weird products—stuff that will expire in two weeks, stuff somebody bought too much of, cereal in holiday boxes from the holiday that just ended, giant bottles of an odd kind of juice it turned out nobody wanted to buy (except us—we bought their entire stock of it and have never been able to find it again), and Kraft Velveeta Shells & Cheese whose cheese sauce is "darker than usual." I can't wait to open the little silver pouch and find out how dark it really is. Will it be even cheezier than usual, too? One can only hope.

So, about this blog. I really am tired of what it's become lately. But that doesn't have to mean shutting it down. I'm thinking maybe what I'll do instead is give it to my dad for his birthday next week—tell him about it, and start writing it for him. And stop being such a baby about other people who are smarter than me, and funnier, and wittier, and more wry (wryer?), and cuter and happier and more interesting. People whose husbands are artists, or running for public office—people who have husbands—and kids—and houses—and parties I'm not invited to—and closer friendships than I've been able to maintain with people I've known a long time. I guess I'm just having another pre-midlife crisis. Or maybe I am, in fact, already in mid-life! What a thought. If I live to be 100, I'm still less than half way there.

And oh god, pretty soon there's going to be menopause to deal with. Am I perimenopausal? I did go to that doctor's appointment last week, and he told me I need to have a mamogram this year. Now that I'm, you know, FORTY.

The other night I was watching something on television about the bird flu, and how it could kill millions of people this winter because it's a totally new kind of disease that our immune systems are utterly unprepared to fight, and so on—and I noticed myself feeling, not afraid but (there is no other word to describe it) offended at the thought that I could get sick from some bird and in a matter of days, be dead. It's out of the question that something like that should never happen to me! This is the twenty-first century! I'm not poor. I don't live in the third world. How dare the bird flu presume to threaten my life? It's preposterous!

Did people take it that personally a hundred years ago? How have our attitudes and behaviors as a society changed, now that it's no longer commonplace for people to die from the flu, or consumption, or whatever people used to always die of, that people don't die of anymore. (In the Emily Dickinson biography I'm reading, her friends and acquaintances are always dying! Their privilege did not protect them. Will ours?) One thing I know has changed is the concept of mourning. Apparently, it used to be allowed. You wore black, you changed your schedule, people gave you a break. Now it's three days' bereavement (if you're lucky) and then chop chop, time for the "healing" to begin! Don't want to use up all your vacation days moping. Imagine wearing black for a year after a loved one has died! At the very least, I think it would make the people around you very uncomfortable if they knew it was actual mourning and not just some kind of gothic fashion statement.

Over the weekend I re-read Wuthering Heights and was fantasizing about turning it into a modern movie a la Romeo+Juliet or that Hamlet where everyone's these corporate scions in Manhattan ... and then I realized that the story line just wouldn't translate, because it's so dependent upon people dying in ways they would just never die nowadays. And things are so much better for women now. You'd have to take major liberties with the plot to make it work.

But the point of all this was just to say that I've been thinking about sickness and health, and life and the end of life, and really kind of feeling my own mortality lately in a way that feels new. What will be left of me when I die? This blog? And what good is that if none of my family even knows about it?

My dad sent me the transcript of the letter my great, great, great grandfather wrote, describing the days around the death of his second wife, and her burial under the kitchen table. To read the story in his own words is just so poignant and heart-opening. After a week and a half, he says, a neighbor dropped by and he told him he could stick around to "see the coffin put down" if he liked. The neighbor went to get her son, who wouldn't come because he "was sick over it and could not stand it." Then some other friends tried to convince him to bury her outside, but he "said it was settled in my mind for years that if she went before me, she should never leave the house." He says they "did not say much" after that but did talk about the children's feelings being hurt and what public opinion would be.

He responds, "I said I care nothing for public opinion, we are in total opposition in everything. Did I think [she] would like it if she were here. I said she was not here and she was the only one of my family who respected my opinion and conduct."

This is the part that I find the most interesting. What did he mean, in total opposition in everything? It appears he may not have been a completely conventional kind of person. His first wife, my great-great-great grandmother, had some kind of title in Europe (he didn't emigrate until later) but was disowned when she married him, an artist and master weaver considered "out of her class." She ended up drinking herself into the ground before dying suddenly of a heart attack. He must have gone through some pretty intense emotional scenes with her before that happened. And obviously there was some heavy stuff going on around his second wife's death, as well. How do people survive such things?

Someday I'd like to try to write this up into a story. I could take it from the perspective of a neighbor, someone with a little distance. I could write it this weekend while I'm finally (hopefully) able to spend some time recuperating from this lousy cold I've been fighting all week. It wouldn't have to be long. It wouldn't even have to be very good. The great thing about a story is, you can write it again later if you need to. It will be different every time you write it, and it can still be true each time.

There's another story percolating somewhere in the back of my brain, having to do with this theme of health and disease and hubris and the cult of modern medicine, tying it in with the controversy that's raging in my town right now over where our new hospital should be built. This is something I care about for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the proposed site is only a half a mile from my house, and building it there would destroy everything I love about this part of the valley. Not to go into that here ... but that's another story waiting to be written.

Finally, I will record that I am still making a point of keeping my social life in a condition resembling "alive." This is important because I've really been having to fight my hermitizing tendencies lately, as witnessed by my last post before this one. But I'm trying. In the last month I've organized two outings to the city and two parties at the garden, and allowed myself to be drawn into the center of at least a couple more. People have been being so kind and solicitous of me lately, it makes me feel kind of silly for wanting to hide. I will also clarify: I want to hide, but I'm not doing it. Well, not much. I did screen two calls tonight. But I'm sick, and I'll call them back tomorrow.

Anyway. Once again I've spent an entire evening in front of the computer, after already having spent an entire day in front of a different computer. I need to stop writing now and cook up that lovely dark orange macaroni and cheeze. Or just go to bed. That sounds even yummier.

The bitter end.

I'm quitting blogging. When I started out, it felt so honest and free to be able to speak and be spoken to like this. Six and a half years later, I'm tired of how big and public and self-conscious the medium seems to have become. Who's the wittiest? The wryest? The most intelligent, insightful, or self-deprecating? Who has the most interesting life, the most provocative ideas or ways of writing about art, culture, politics, parenthood, or any other thing? Who has the most closely examined life? The most sensitive feelings? The most lovingly nurtured spiritual life? In short: Who's the coolest blogger in all the blogosphere?

All I know for sure is that it ain't me.

Blogging doesn't feel like sharing to me anymore. It just feels like a big fat ego-fest.

Not YOU, of course! I love YOUR blog! Seriously.

But I'm finished with this one. If you want to keep in touch, leave me a comment.

T.

Listen to this

Because my usual tunes are gone I've downloaded some old radio programs to listen to ... and I ran across this Speaking of Faith episode about depression. You can listen to it here. It's free.

(As an aside, I have to put forth the disclaimer that the host has a kind of annoying way of articulating the first sound of every word when she's reading something ... but the content is good.)

It's been more than a year since I've had any symptoms of depression at all, and more than seven since I've been really crushed by it. But it's kind of like my divorce, or September 11, or any other traumatic experience—I can go weeks and even months without thinking about it, and then I'll see or hear or remember some random thing and suddenly the tears are rolling down my face all over again. It isn't because I feel sad, or because I'm re-experiencing the trauma. It's more like I just feel really, really OPEN. Permeable, like everything's moving through me. In depression, this kind of intensity felt overwhelming, like something that just might kill me. These days it feels ... how does it feel? It feels good, because when I feel it moving through me I see that I am able to endure it now. I can even welcome it.

This man in the program was recalling a psychologist who said something that I'm going to be thinking more about, because I had intuitively felt the same idea myself, and yet until I heard him say it I'd never really thought of it in quite this way. The therapist said, You seem to look at your depression as the hand of an enemy trying to crush you. Do you think you could see it instead as the hand of a friend pressing you down onto ground on which it is safe to stand?

Losing my mind and my will broke me in some ways I'm still just starting to understand. It's not a romantic or innately spiritual or even meaningful experience, at least not while you're in the midst of it. It's just awful. But I am grateful for it because being cracked open and broken down like that has made it necessary to put myself together again, and I think I'm doing a better and gentler job of it now than I was able to do in my teens and 20s. I hope so, anyway.

Technical difficulty

Last week the hard drive crashed on my computer at work and I lost over 1000 files out of iTunes. They're all still on the iPod, of course, and I know there's software that can download them from there back onto the computer, but I don't know if it works for the most recent version of iTunes (5.0.1 4). I backed them up onto CDs in July, but now I can only find one of the three CDs. Argh.

None of this would be an issue if I had a high speed internet connection at home, but alas, we can't get DSL or cable where we live, and wireless broadband would cost us more than a hundred bucks a month. So I use the computer at work for anything that requires a fast connection, which I know I really shouldn't do for a number of reasons ... including the possibility of catastrophic system failure. I lost all my good fonts, too. Also, I think I put my contacts in the wrong eye today. Sigh.

Gotta go — somebody just showed up with a big pink box that looks very much like the boxes from my favorite bakery. Must investigate.

A test.

Figuring out how to upload photos ... This is a picture of a house that's just come on the market here. The price? A mere $1.5 million. The headline (I am laying it out for an ad at work) reads: "Majestic oaks."
I'm not kidding. Sometimes I really wonder what I'm doing trying to live here.

Dolly Parton's wig

That's all I was able to see of her through the crowd, being only just over five feet tall myself. But I could hear her! This was yesterday at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park. I didn't get a chance to get down there on Saturday, but Sunday was great too—we saw Eliza Gilkyson, the Be Good Tanyas, Todd Snider, Kevin Welch & Kieran Kane & Fats Kaplin, Guy Clark, Dave Alvin, Steve Earle, Joe Ely, Verlon Thompson, Rosanne Cash, Emmylou Harris, the Hot Buttered Rum String Band, and a local jug band I'd never heard of called Stiff Dead Cat, who had a song featuring the fabulous line, "Nothing to eat but rats and snakes!" I will definitely be looking those guys up for a second listen.

This morning I started counting and found that I cross five creeks between my house and my office. All but one of them is dry at the moment. They're beautiful, all round clean gray rocks carpeted with yellow leaves and blackberry brambles, and shaded by enormous bay and eucalyptus trees. You can see paths in the leaves where animals have walked. One of these days very soon, before it starts raining, I'll take the camera and document the creekbeds, and then later, document them filling up with water. That's one of my favorite things that happens all year.