Red Checker Square

Estrellita

2009-04-17T14:47:00.000-07:00

Little Star has the best pizza in San Francisco, but you usually have to wait at least 45 minutes. You might get really hungry, but with the right company, you'll never get bored.

I miss this place

2009-04-06T21:26:00.000-07:00

Not everyone knows this, but I spent last summer living on a writer/artist/activist colony in upsate New York. I met so many amazing people, I was writing, I was the projectionist at the local theater, I was working for a cool non-profit, the place was BEAUTIFUL, but I was super depressed, and I left. I feel a lot of regret over this sometimes, and it's taken a lot for me to realize that sometimes the way you're feeling has absolutely nothing to do with your surroundings or your present. Sometimes it's memories that are too strong, or you're just not ready to be as great as the great things that are happening around you. Sometimes I think that trauma and violence can sit inside you, physically. It stays in your muscles, in your bones, and sometimes it sneaks out when you think you're at your happiest. This place was a perfect place for me but not perfect for who i was this summer. I hope to return someday with more readiness, with a better fit.

(someone help me with the html so that you don't have to click on the pictures in order to see the whole thing!)

hiking with shorty, blue mountain lake in the background

Ellen and Elizabeth. Two lovely ladies that taught me so much.

hotel, scout and lazarus

vegetable garden on an ugly day

the adirondack museum, home of many amazing dioramas.

taxidermy :(

Re-Reading Maggie Nelson

2009-03-02T16:37:00.000-08:00

From, The Light of the Mind

She had been shot once in the front and once in the back of the head. She was wandering, trying to find someone to remove the slugs from her skull. She was not dead yet, but she feared she was dying. The holes in her head were perfectly round and bloodless, with burnt-flared edges, two eclipses. The passage of air through the holes felt peculiar, just dimly painful, like chewing hot or cold food on a cavity, the sensation of space where it had once been dense and full.
Sunlight shot around the circumference of each black rind, so that a long shaft of pale light cast out from the center of her forehead, and another shaft streamed behind her.
Is this the light of the mind? Is this the light of my mind?
So I was a genius after all! The thought made her smile, but then she wondered, Why had the light always been invisible? I must have been squandering it, I must have felt only its vaguest rotations. Now what can I do with it? If I could find a lampshade, someone could read by it. I might illuminate entire rooms, entire dungeons, I shine so bright.
But in fact she was losing the light; it leaked everywhere, unstoppable.

-Maggie Nelson

When my mom was in the hospital, she received regular visits from a Unitarian champlain named Michael. One day, only weeks before her death, Michael couldn't come, and a rabbinical student named Deborah showed up in my mom's room asking if she would like to talk. "No thanks," my mom said, "I'm an atheist." They got to talking anyway, just making small talk, and eventually about spirituality. I showed up later that day, surprised to see this stranger when I walked in. My mom introduced us, exclaiming, "This is my new friend Deborah!"

The morning that she fell into the coma that would lead to her death, Deborah took me for a walk in the garden next to UCLA. She told me that my mom was one of the most spiritual people she had ever met, and she was so impressed with this balance of being so strongly in touch with her spiritual side and being so logical and inquisitive about everything at the same time. She not only actively asked the practical questions of why she got sick (in terms of her health or what was going on in the environment), but she sought the spiritual answers too. Deborah told me, "Your mom never asked 'Why?' in the vague, panicked and frustrated tone most people do. She would ask specific questions, squint her eyes and talk through it. And she never denied the emotions that came along with the curiosity. She just managed a balance, emotional, but with grace, somehow. I strive for this grace.

I first read Maggie Nelson's books about a year ago. Micah Perks recommended them to me when I was trying to write about my mom at the end of 2007. I love her work because of this balance. "The Red Parts," is about the brutal murder of Nelson's aunt which took place years before she was born. The book is like a true crime novel for the literary feminist. Nelson makes the distinction between how we deal with death in private, versus how some are forced to do it in public. Nelson grew up often being mistaken to be her deceased aunt by her grandfather and she explores how this act of violence trickled down over the years affect to her and her sister. The books are all about GRIEF and WOMEN and how weird and hard it is to WRITE about that stuff...you know, all of those things that I can't stop thinking about these days.

Sorry about the disjointed feel to this. I started writing this post weeks ago, and I'm only finishing now because I'm having a rough night, and I think that finishing something will make me feel better. Going to go knit now.

Like Sex and Lists

2008-10-22T22:41:00.000-07:00

Tonight in my writing class I tried to write a story about a woman who gives birth to a bicycle. I took BART home, and while walking up the steps to where I'd locked my bike I thought, "Tonight, of all nights, please, PLEASE do not be stolen."

ps. while exploring all things mothers these days, i can't avoid the subject of angelina jolie. for better or for worse.

Hi, I Moved Here

2008-10-07T00:12:00.000-07:00

Amy Hempel

2008-10-06T23:58:00.000-07:00

I stumbled up the steps tonight, and I said "Stumble Home" because I was thinking of the Amy Hempel story, and the words just sound pretty. But then my housemate corrected me. The story is called "Tumble Home." Less like my night, more like the internet thing.

Eye Like It

2008-10-05T23:47:00.000-07:00

Dream about standing outside in the rain, and crying, and being embarrassed about my red eyes, and looking into the window of a cafe at someone who's a big deal to me. The inside of the window was covered in eyes, though, and he couldn't tell which were mine. So there was nothing to worry about.

Forever Overhead

2008-09-15T20:48:00.000-07:00

"You decide this needs to be thought about. It may, after all, be all right to do something scary without thinking, but not when the scariness is the not thinking itself. Not when not thinking turns out to be wrong. At some point the wrongnesses have piled up blind: pretend-boredom, weight, thin rungs, hurt feet, space cut into laddered parts that melt together only in a disappearance that takes time. The wind on the ladder not what anyone would have expected. The way the diving board protrudes from shadow into light and you can't see past the end. When it all turns out to be different you should get to think. It should be required."

-David Foster Wallace.

She stood there with her hips.

2008-09-02T15:33:00.000-07:00

I was beginning to worry that the end of every relationship from now on would feel like my mom dying, again, because the end of this one feels like the end of the last one. But this morning, my new therapist made me laugh. Not invalidating anything, but we just laughed, I cried and laughed a lot in just one hour, and it was in Westwood, too. For goodness' sake.

Reading Vendela Vida

2008-08-27T15:32:00.000-07:00

"It seems like there are too many men. I can't keep them straight."
She looks at my chest. I've deliberately worn an extra-large sweatshirt that says nothing.
“I just wonder,” she says, “if maybe they’re taking advantage of you, of your situation.”
I look out the window at the students in red or blue or black jackets walking across the thinly snow-covered campus.
“I didn’t seek him out,” I say.
She looks up from her notebook.
“I didn’t seek any of them out.”
“Can you elaborate on that??” she says.
“It’s all nonspecific, this affection, this longing.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing is personal,” I say. “Not who you want to die with or who you want to love. It’s all nonspecific.”

August Again

2008-08-26T19:15:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking about moving somewhere that doesn't have a summer. I can move anywhere I want.

A break up is obviously easier than death, right?. Outside of the pain of rejection, a part of it is okay because there is something that is telling you, in some way, maybe not in your own life, but at least in the universe that this is right, that it works. No one understands death in terms of their lonely selves or the togetherness of the world or anything, but in a break up, at least the other person, who you loved in whatever way you loved them or thought you loved them, made a choice that seemed like a kind of right choice to them, at least there is something that is still within the world you know (even though it’s far outside of yourself) that has had the power to take themselves out of your life. In death there is something outside of yourself that takes them away but it’s outside of all of us. So that's why that pain lasts, I guess.

This doesn't make me feel much better. It feels like both are happening at the same time. God I only write in this when I'm desperate. It's so not a public thing.

I'm reading Vendela Vida's And Now You Can Go. It begins, "It was 2:15 in the afternoon of December 2 when a man holding a gun approached me in Riverside Park," the main character talks her way through the encounter and escapes uninjured, but she's left an emotional wreck. And that's the rest of the book.

Books for Grieving...lists, lists, lists...

2008-05-14T12:31:00.000-07:00

Don't Go Where I Can't Follow, by Anders Nilson.

I'd seen this book on a website for this new indie comic book store in LA on Fairfax called Family (familylosangeles.com). It was more than a month after my mom had gotten out of a very violent experience in the ICU. We had spent two months thinking she wasn't going to make it through the week, and then she made it. She was still in the hospital, only now in the oncology ward. Everyone was acting happy, but it was this crazy shocking happy, and a part of me knew that even though we survived what seemed like the worst two months of our lives, things could still go bad again. I had been preparing myself for her death, and then when she survived the ICU, I didn't know what to make of everything. This book came at the right place and the right time, and I became obsessed with it. I totally judged it by it's raw and simple cover and its poetic title, and after reading the description, I couldn't stop thinking about it. It became this thing that I NEEDED for fixing... something. It was a friday, I remember. I'd spent the afternoon by my mom's bedside. She became tired at around eight and told me, "Go out, have fun, it's friday night."

I took Santa Monica Blvd. and sat in a half hour of friday night traffic before I got to Family. I watched a group of girls in a car next to me singing along to their radio. I searched my radio for something distracting. I remember listening to the oldies station and expecting myself to react as I normally did to a familiar song. Someone was singing something about sunshine, finally, having sunshine. I thought, this should distract me, lift me. And when it didn't, I thought maybe I needed something to better match my mood. I searched for sad songs. And then I think it was Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares To You" that i tried to wallow in but it only made my emotions feel fake and contrived. I turned the radio off.

The sun was going down when I arrived at Family. There were no spots on Fairfax and I had to park a few blocks away. I walked there along a sidewalk that was covered in fallen palm tree bark. When I got to the store I looked all over. I found another book of his, "Monologues for the Coming Plague," and I liked it, but it was like that song about sunshine. It wasn't the thing that I needed. I kept looking all over that tiny store. There were only a few other customers besides me, moving slowly, browsing and reading. I was searching, moving quickly. I didn't want to ask about the book because I thought if I talked to anyone that night I'd cry. But I knew I probably looked strange, frantic and buzzing around. (In fact, in those days I couldn't go anywhere without feeling strange, like I had this big sad secret everyone was about to discover. I kind of still feel this way.) When I finally asked, in a nervous and shaky voice, the man behind the counter said they were out. It was a popular book, funny enough. They'd get another shipment next week.

I detoured down Melrose and cut through an ally to get to my car. I shouldn't be walking here alone, I thought. But I wasn't afraid. I remember thinking I'd tell my attacker to do his worst. Whatever power he wanted out of violence was nothing. I looked towards the shadows invitingly. A physical struggle, outside, under minimal hollywood streetlights, with a solid enemy --this would feel good. At this point, I invited an enemy that I could touch, that I could be hurt by. In the dark, the fallen bark from the palm trees looked like small dead animals on the sidewalk.

I finally did get the book from Hi-de-Ho in Santa Monica. It holds letters and postcards that Nilson and his girlfriend had written to eachother, photographs of adventures they'd had together before she was diagnosed with cancer. The part about her illness is short and very raw. It reads like something that's not finished and as I've learned in trying to write about grief, might never be. What I really like about Don't Go Where I Can't Follow is that it's not indulgent, it's so unbelievably intimate, and he kind of (effectively) ignores the reader. He writes about things in detail and in kind of a practical way and he's not afraid to write about emotions without trying to sound like his grief is different from anyone else's. He's not afraid to be cheesy, as I often worry about, because the emotions are all there already. I think when I'm writing about death and grieving I sometimes feel this pressure to show that my grief is different. It's something everyone eventually goes through, why should I be writing about it, or why should someone be reading it. I think what Nilson achieves is a sense that his experience is not special except for the fact that it's lonely and special for every individual. Everyone reads poems at funerals, scatters ashes. But it doesn't get less profound or important. he includes a poem he read at his girlfriend's funeral as well as drawings of the day he scattered her ashes. I've read this over and over again.

He also wrote another graphic book about this subject called "The End". It's a little harder to find, but it's really good too.

other books i'll talk about later...

the red parts, maggie nelson

jane, a murder, maggie nelson

a sorrow beyond dreams, peter handke

fun home, allison bechdel

Heroin/e and The Love of My Life by cheryl strayed

Without, Donald Hall

Collected Poems, Jane Kenyon

Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag

there are so many.

Not your favorite song?

2008-05-10T16:00:00.000-07:00

2008-04-21T12:41:00.000-07:00

People's Parties

2008-04-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

I went to a party this weekend and now I feel a song and a painting.

All the people at this party
They've got a lot of style
They've got stamps of many countries

WikiMemory

2008-04-17T13:32:00.001-07:00

An encyclopedia for memories:
http://www.memoryarchive.org/en/MemoryArchive

we are noothing whoa oh!

2008-04-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts...

tj and i were talking about the inadequacy of language and he noted that there are so many ways we communicate with each other outside of words. he was lying in my lap and i pushed a strand of his hair behind his ear. that could have been interpreted as a tender gesture, but it wasn't. i pushed his hair behind his ear and felt it for the moment with no intention other than for fidgeting. it did indeed signify something--that i was comfortable with tj. i'm used to touching him. if i had done the same thing to matt mispagel it would have meant something completely different. so sure, these physical gestures are methods of communicating but they are so unconscious that they are almost impossible to interpret correctly and are perhaps as limiting as words.

Obama boys calm down

2008-04-16T10:15:00.000-07:00

I was walking to the poles on my way to vote for Barack Obama during the primaries when a truck full of drunk frat boys drove by me screaming "Vote for Obama!!" It was dark out. I was alone. I almost felt like I'd been assaulted...heh, and it kind of made me think twice about my vote.

So: Hey, Obama boys: Back off already!

Young women are growing increasingly frustrated with the fanatical support of Barack and gleeful bashing of Hillary.

"This riveting Democratic primary campaign has provided us with its own stock characters: There are the young "Daily Show"-watching Obama-maniacs getting over their irony addiction by falling earnestly in love with the senator from Illinois. There are the pissed-off second-wave feminists, uptight and out of touch, howling as their dream of seeing a woman in the Oval Office fades. And then there are the young women caught between them."

Read the entire article here: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/04/14/obama_supporters/print.html

"Women are never front runners"- Gloria Steinem

2008-04-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/opinion/08steinem.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

She says, "...Why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what."

But bitch is the new black amirite? Anyway, she's not trying to hold a competition for who has it the toughest. As she says, "The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together."

I finished college

2008-04-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

Yep. That's Michael Jackson and Roberta Flack. I grew up watching that shit.

What we're all sick of talking about

2008-03-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

I read Katha Pollitt's column in the Nation out loud to my mom all last year when she was in the hospital. We'd get excited about Pollitt's ideas as this crazy election year got closer and closer and we had something to distract ourselves with.

I stopped reading the column for a while, but found this one which she wrote in October. It's called, "How different are the top three Dems?"

Pollitt writes,
"If the primary were today, I might vote for Edwards, even though he sometimes seems a bit like a hologram. Or I might go for the candidate I actually agree with, Dennis Kucinich, or the one who seems the most human, Mike Gravel. However, there are still nearly four endless months to slog through: I could be won over by a candidate who just stands up and speaks his or her mind without calculating the effect of every syllable on some indecisive mini-demographic. Someone who will speak frankly about the disaster that is the war on drugs, say, or call for free college education. I would even vote for a candidate who refuses to name a favorite Bible passage on national television. "Tim," this candidate might say, "I'd be happy to talk Scripture with you over a cup of coffee after the show, but in this country religion is private and personal, and if I'm elected I'll keep it that way." There, would-be Presidents of America, was that so hard?"

read the entire article here: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071022/pollitt

Laika Meets the Rememberer

2008-03-16T22:17:00.000-07:00

David Wilson is the founder of The Museum of Jurassic Technology, a tiny museum on Venice Blvd. in L.A. that holds exhibits of things such as x-ray photos of flowers, sculptures made entirely of tiny butterfly scales, a collection devoted to trailer park culture and a room full of portraits of the Russian space dogs. Aimee Bender is one of my favorite short story authors. She writes about things such as boys with fingers for hands and lovers experiencing reverse evolution. The two of them sat down to have a conversation about e-mail, how to visit a museum, and their favorite centuries. Confused? I found this recording and listened to it the last time I cleaned the house:
http://www.csulb.edu/~gzucman/strange/StrangeAngelsNo76.mp3

The "Caribou in the Willows" is from a MOJT exhibit on Cat's Cradle techniques.

Our cute little bunk bed.

2008-03-12T13:15:00.000-07:00

Remember? This is before:

After:

Good job, us.

TJ and I were in it, on the top bunk, but no one was hurt. Luckily, Emily missed the disaster. I'm not sure how fixable it is, since it looks like the welds are broken too. Shit, shit, shit.

Soundly

2008-02-27T02:37:00.000-08:00

Emily S. read this Daniel Handler story to me over the phone when I was waiting in the UCLA hospital lobby.

"'Sick?' I would hear myself yelling to the late night science television. It was the only thing worth watching after visiting hours were done. 'Why haven't we fixed sick yet? You scientists there--put down those starfish and help us. I hereby demand that all people who are good at math make the world free of illness. The rest of us will write you epic poems and staple them together into a booklet.' Then I'd weep, finally, and fall asleep in Adam's sweatshirt, and wake up and quit my job."

-From "Adverbs"

Also, I want to move here:

2008-02-06T13:03:00.001-08:00

I hate melodramatic livejournals and things like this but for some reason or another I have this desperate need to say to everyone everywhere I'm really afraid of a lot of things every day and I'm not doing okay.

This is me wearing red cowboy boots in the intensive care unit:

Forgive me for being morbid.

2008-01-30T09:31:00.001-08:00

My sister pointed out that I am the only person still alive in this photograph. Counterclockwise, these women are my Great Aunt Blanche, my Grandmother Anita, me (i'm showing them all how to dance) and my Mom. Have you ever seen yourself in a photograph in which you are surrounded by dead people? Are you 22 years old? Photographs are these little frozen pockets of time, and when I look at this one I get the feeling that I wouldn't be able to make that moment live again. I don't know why I keep it stuck up on my lamp where I can stare at it everyday. It makes me feel insanely lonely. I can't imagine taking it down, though.

This blog isn't meant to be limited to the sad things in my life (well actually, there's only one sad thing in my life but it's pretty big). I wish I could write a fashion blog or just blog about how cool and fun I am and how I find the best youtube video's. Because I am cool and fun and really happy and I'm pretty okay at the internets.

pink and white light

2008-01-28T12:34:00.000-08:00

last night i dreamed that mom recovered. she was taking adult education classes and she had a classmate who was afraid of glass. one day the classmate stabbed a few students with a piece of the window, my mom being one of them. THe girl escaped into the woods (i remember there was glass all around). My mom was okay, no one died. Police chased her and when she turned to attack someone else, the police began stabbing her. As the girl bled to death she said "I watched them murder my own mother," as if to explain herself.

we went to the girls' house. my mom and i insisted we accompany the police. when they opened the door, the white light inside was so bright, you couldn't see anything, you could only hear each other. it was like being in the dark, but brightness. there was one pink light that looked like a laser coming from the corner of the room.

a woman spoke to us, and said that she was the mother of the girl who the police had killed and she said, good riddance. we couldn't stand to squint in that painful light any longer and we left. My mom and i walked down the street. "Poor girl," my mom said. "No wonder." I look at her and i am amazed at her empathy.

Leukemia Index

2007-12-10T12:03:00.000-08:00

Leukemia Index
Number of blocks from our house to the farmer’s market where my mother and I used to walk: 8
Number of blocks we were able to walk on the thanksgiving before her diagnosis when she said she felt too weak to walk any further: 3
Number of white blood cells in a healthy person’s blood: between 4,500 and 10,000 cells per microliter
Number of white blood cells in my mother’s blood upon diagnosis: over 100,000 per microliter
Number of months after my mother’s diagnosis that my sister waited to share the news about her pregnancy: 2
Number of months I kept it a secret: 2
Number of platelets, cells circulating in the blood that allow blood clots, in a healthy person: 150,000 to 450,000 per microliter
Number of platelets in my mom’s blood during her first month in the ICU: between 0 and 5 per microliter
Number of blood and platelet transfusions she received each day: 6-8
Number of platelet transfusions I donated from my own body to my mom’s: 3
Number of platelets per microliter in my mom’s blood on the day she received my platelets: 0.5
Number of times a day a respiratory therapist had to suction the blood out of her lungs so that she wouldn’t drown in it: 15
Number of machines attached to her in the ICU: 11
Number of months after I moved to Los Angeles to be with my mom that my boyfriend in Santa Cruz broke up with me: 1
Number of men I slept with the summer my Mom was sick: 3
Number of pounds my sister’s baby weighed when he was born: 9.5
Number of pounds my mother lost in the months after her diagnosis: 50
Floor number at the UCLA medical center where my sister gave birth: 5th
Floor number at the UCLA medical center where my mother was treated when first admitted: 10th
Floor number at the UCLA medical center where my mother was treated when she was in critical condition: 4th
Room number in the ICU where she was treated from February to April: 401
Number of months she was in remission, and home with us: 1
Room number in the ICU where she died in August: 401
Number of minutes the Doctors performed CPR on her before they found a steady heart beat: 20
Number of months between the day my mother was diagnosed with leukemia and the day she died: 8
Number of hours between the time my father, sister and I decided that it was time to unplug my mom from the life support machines and the time my mother passed away: 6

Exhaustion

2007-12-03T11:18:00.000-08:00

My mother has been dead for 18 weeks. I have been in Santa Cruz for 14. The end of this quarter really snuck up on me. I can't believe I actually thought that I could get a significant amount of my short memoir project done in this amount of time. I've been doing an independent study this quarter with Micah Perks in leiu of my senior project so that I can graduate in March. This means I have to have a polished, cohesive book done in about a week and a half. Bound. Signed, sealed, delivered.

But this is something that I won't finish anytime soon. I've learned this much. I'm not sure if I still even want to do it. When I was in LA, in the thick of it, (the thick of the cancer, that is) writing was kind of easy. It happened. I didn't have to think about it. Here, my life is suddenly not centered around a hospital. Its difficult to write about the situation, because I feel like I'm writing about a story i've told and thought about over and over again. I applied for a grant to do it, thinking I wouldn't actually win. I wanted an excuse to map things out, and to feel like what I'm doing makes me a member of the world! Or something. So...I won! $500! I'm nervous. I'm not sure if I want to do it. I don't feel like I'm a good writer anymore. Even within these lines it all feels forced, and reads uncomfortably. How did I convince them to give me so much money? I really don't understand.

"Horror is something perfectly natural: the mind's horror vacui. A thought is taking shape, then suddenly it notices that there is nothing more to think. Whereupon it crashes to the ground like a figure in a comic strip who suddenly realizes that he has been walking on air.

Someday I shall write about all this in greater detail."

Peter Handke.

This photograph has nothing to do with anything, But everything to do with anything.

It's not

2007-11-23T15:39:00.000-08:00

"It is not true that writing has helped me. In my weeks of preoccupation with the story, the story has not ceased to preoccupy me. Writing has not, as I at first supposed, been a remembering of a concluded period in my life, but merely a constant prestense at remembering, in the form of sentences that only lay claim to detachment."
-You guessed it, Peter Handke, Sorrow Beyond Dreams.

I tell my story over and over again so that it is just a story and no longer a reality. Not even a memory.

Someday I'll stop quoting, but for now, they understand what I saw better than I do.

2007-11-11T22:56:00.000-08:00

"And where you are is where you are not,"
TS Eliot.

Sharon Olds

2007-11-09T17:13:00.001-08:00

...the world that was not enough for her without me in it.

This is on your feeds, right?

2007-11-07T19:24:00.000-08:00

too.

I am reading so many things about death.

2007-11-05T09:43:00.000-08:00

"You sit in the chair by the hospital bed and hold your child in your arms. It lives and it lives, but little by little it is dead.
To see a limit, you must see both sides of the limit. The one and the other. But here is the transition. No moment when. No 'just now it was...'
Looking back, there is nothing of a 'till now' anywhere in sight. The seconds tumble over cliffs, in no time there yawns the chasm of forever and always. Having arrived here, on this chair beside this empty bed, there is suddenly nothing else anymore, nothing else but nothing."

-P.F. Thomese, "Shadowchild"

Careful.

2007-11-05T09:38:00.000-08:00

“It is these empty
spaces you have to watch out for, as they flood up with feeling before you even realize what's happened."

A remembering and formulating machine.

2007-10-29T09:57:00.000-07:00

"My Mother has been dead for almost seven weeks; I had better get to work before the need to write about her, which I felt so strongly at her funeral, dies away and i fall back into the dull speechlessness with which I reacted to the news of her suicide. Yes, get to work: for, intensely as i sometimes feel the need to write about my mother, this need is so vague that if I didn't work at it I would, in my present state of mind, just sit at my typewriter pounding out the same letters over and over again. This sort of kinetic therapy alone would do me no good; it would only make me passive and apathetic.
"When I write, I necessarily write about the past, about something which, at least while i am writing, is behind me. As usual when engaged in literary work, I am alienated from myself and transformed into an object, a remembiering and formulating machine."
-Peter Handke "A Sorrow Beyond Dreams

My Love

2007-10-28T18:03:00.000-07:00

My genes, my love, are rubberbands and rope. Make yourself a structure you can live inside. Amen.
-Aimee Bender

2007-10-26T15:18:00.000-07:00

My Dad took photographs of my Mom throughout her illness. He's planning a book now with a publishing company called zuma press. I feel pretty weird about the way they look. Seeing my Mom as a thumbnail next to photographs of child warriors in Africa is really difficult. And the editor changed the title of the piece to "Pam's Song" instead of "Pam's Story". My Mom is not a musician! The cursive red writing is really cheesy, the interview is sloppy. And there is a line that reads, "She was given a death sentence called leukemia." Need I say more? How fucking tacky! The editor called me before they were published and told me how moved he was and actually said that this was the most important story he has ever worked on in his career. I was really moved by his sincerity, but now I think it was kind of bullshit. Anyway, here's a link. This is not for the squeemish.

http://www.zreportage.com/PAM/

2007: I am strong. Please know this about me.

2007-10-26T12:50:00.000-07:00

My Dad took this photograph of my Mom from the window of a bus. It's the mid 70's. She is saying goodbye to him.

It's been a hard year. In my young life, I've never experienced time in such a compact, conclusive way. I guess that's what death and illness does to anyone. There has never been a time where I could say, "Oh, 1999 was the year when__." I mean, I've always said "When I was in ninth grade..." and defined things by school, which was the most structured thing in my life. But this year, life is defined simply by life. 2007 will always be the year that my Mom got leukemia, my sisters' baby was born, I got dumped , worked four great jobs, realized how strong and resilient I am and always was, and of course, the year of my mom's death.

I haven't really used this blog very regularly and the internet still seems like a somewhat innapropriate place to deal with grief. But I feel so alone in this. People assume I want to change the subjet or that we have to avoid the talking about anything that has to do with cancer or death or even mom's. A friend of mine was telling me about a recent visit to LA to visit his Mom and how sweet she was and how she cooked for him, and then he kind of interrupted himself with "Oh, sorry." Like he was afraid I was going to fall apart at the mere mention of a still living breathing Mom! I just think that our culture deals with death in such a limited way. Even in the way I talk, if someone asks me what happened, I say, "Well, she passed away in August," and I can't just leave it at that! I immediately have to say, "But she had a great life," or "Oh, we're doing ok though." Why can't I just say, "hey, it's bad. It's just bad. Believe me. It's so bad." It's not only death, but problems in general that are just quickly resolved. In my grief I automatically want to find a fast solution so that I don't feel this pain anymore. And I'm doing well with it. I am. I am strong. Please know this about me. But it's not something you can just talk about, even if you say everything you need to say, and then be done with it. Sometimes I feel like it's just something inside me that I need to give out. Like these painful memories can just be given away if I tell someone about them. But it sticks, and it sneaks up on me. I admire cultures who set aside strict guidelines for grieving. My neighbor Betsy, who is an orthodox jew, said she didn't bathe for a week after her father died and for a whole year she didn't listen to music or watch comedies. I like this idea of imposing rules for yourself to grieve. Otherwise it sneaks up on you and you break down at moments when you least expect it.

Anyway, maybe there is a way that I can use this cold, fast culture to grieve. And so here's my blog! Heh. People tell me I'm brave for talking and writing about about my mother's illness and death so openly, but honestly, this is the only thing I can do to make myself feel better. And maybe it's brave to even acknowledge the need to make myself feel better. I just feel so alone in this. Santa Cruz has always been such a paradise. Everyone is happy, and I have always managed happiness with ease here. Now, I feel like I'm contaminating it somehow. Anyway, I want to use the internet to express these things. So often this summer and earlier this year when my mom first went into the ICU, I wanted to put a facebook note up saying, "I'M NOT DOING OK! HELP! BE MY FRIEND! LOVE ME!" but of course I didn't. What crazy person does that? Facebook is for fun. Not grief. But maybe I can manipulate what the internet means to me now.

Disaster Relief

2007-10-26T10:14:00.000-07:00

Things are getting a little better.

Like I, a Saw

2007-06-15T18:39:00.000-07:00

I saw them flap, like those of a hummingbird. A phrase. It starts with a phrase and ends with a meaning. I am writing a story and this phrase is going to be in it. The entire story will be about this phrase, but will ignore it at the same time. Something about communicating. Or maybe about memory. Something that praises the careful and paced people who see things; who see things as subtle and quick as the wings of a hummingbird. But there will be no hummingbird in the story. There won’t even be an “I”. The “I” in the phrase stands more alone than the hummingbird. There will be characters but none will communicate with the “I”. The phrase is impenetrable. The protagonist won’t even think about trying to unlock the “I” or the hummingbird. She won’t try to break in but will carry the phrase with her like a security blanket inside a locked box.
I shared it with you because you promised to leave it alone. You saw it where I’d written it somewhere and you found me, so I gave it to you.
“Leave them inside,” I said. “Please. They’re not words you can move around. You can’t use them in other places and you can’t pull the whole thing apart by talking about them.” You nodded. I thought you would say something. “What’s your name?” I finally asked.
“Hummingbird,” I’ve been trying to forget that word for so long. I almost forgot that this was your first reply. It’s been years, and I still laugh when I wake up and I hear this word, in your voice.
“Really?”
“No, I’m kidding.”
We made rules for what we could and could not tell. We knew everything about each other, but ignored each other at the same time. We never introduced each other to our families, and never talked about our friends. You were my world, but no one knew. I referred to you only as a never present presence. People knew you as simply something that was making me happier. You could have been a secret hobby for all they knew. I carried my thoughts of you like the pens and spray cans I had learned to leave at home. You were my secret. I wouldn’t share you with anyone, even if I could.
The last day I saw you, was that day you dove under the wave. When you came up for air, you’re halter top was pushed into your armpit, behind your breast.
“The wave,” I started. My words had become clumsy at the sight of your bareness. “You’re falling out of your bathing suit,”
You looked down and laughed as you fixed it. I thought I should laugh but I didn’t. This was what we were supposed to leave alone. I should have laughed, but I just looked into your face. You stopped smiling and moved towards me. You reached out and touched me, between my breasts. I began to pull away, and you held your hand right above my chest. You moved it, cupping the air around my body, under my arm and down to the bottom of my back. Our faces were so close. I’m not sure if I’m sorry that I pulled away. I’m not sure if I’m glad that I dove under the next wave. I didn’t need to touch you then. I wanted to stand in front of you. I wanted to take off my bathing suit and just stand in front of you.
That night you told me to close my eyes and not open them until you gave the OK. I didn’t, and I felt you next to me all night. But when I opened my eyes in the morning you were gone.
So I’ve started writing it again. I pulled out my cans and pens that I’d hid in the closet. I’ve written it everywhere.
At night I write it. I’ve taken airplanes and ships to every city you might be. During the day, I say it out loud.
I expected you to hear it when I said it out loud on a crowded bus. I would say it in a foreign language and you’d hear it, because you are one of the careful and paced ones. That’s how you would find me. There was no question in my mind that you were looking for me too. I traveled to Spain to make my announcement, trying to find you. I whispered it when I sat down on a bus. And I waited. Everyone was wrapped up in their own conversations, or staring straight ahead. I understood in pieces, overhearing phrases that I only possibly understood. I said it louder.
The little boy across from me who was talking to his mother kept on saying, “Hombre,” like a grown man. It was strange to hear that little voice, the equivalent of saying “Dude,” or “Man,” in English. This strange little boy should have been enough to distract the other passengers, I thought. Or maybe in its foreignness it was only strange to me. “I saw them…” I began, and it came out louder than I had anticipated. “Hombre!” the little boy said to his smiling, acquiescent mother. Her lips were pursed, so that only the corners of her mouth contributed to the smile. Her hands were folded on her lap, and she was listening to a man in front of her, who kept referring to her as, “Mujer”.
I finished the phrase, ashamed that I had paused, afraid that I’d lost the confidence I used to have to approach it as something whole. This would be the first, and not the last time I would break it up. It used to be that I went wherever the phrase went. I followed it. I allowed it to act out. When it came out louder than I thought my voice could control, I followed it. But now I feared that I had unwillingly taken it apart. I had gone inside it and now, on the bus, I wasn’t sure if I had only imagined a few glances in my direction.
I got off at the next stop and entered a café. They spoke to me in English. It was a tourist spot.
“What can I get you Senorita?”
“Coffee,” I said. As I waited, I wrote it in red on some sugar packets. I wrote it on five napkins and returned them to the dispenser.
When I got my coffee, I ripped open a sugar packet and accidentally spilled a little. I opened another and added it to the pile. Then I opened five more. That wasn’t enough for a sentence of nine words. I opened six more and poured it on the table. I wrote the words in capital letters with my finger, making spaces in the sugar.
“Like vhat of a hummingbird?” said a voice over my shoulder. I quickly turned around. Three German tourists wearing sun visors and fanny packs were leaning over, looking at my work.
“Vings,” said another one. “Eeets zee vings of a hummingbird.”
I put my fingers in the mess and erased the words I had written. I pushed the sugar into a pile on the corner of the table, put down five euros and ran out of there.

In our rules we had to ignore the most important parts. I had to ignore what I loved. What it was about you. But I know now, and I’d tell you, if only I could find you. I can’t use just a sentence to find you because you are not only inside of it, you are the sentence. No more following blind codes. I think I’ve finally figured out how to get to you, and there’s no code. The code is stubborn and useless when it is complete. I opened it up.
At first, “I saw,” I wrote it on the red brick wall of a community college, a desk in the public library, countless bathroom stalls and a statue of a globe in front of an office building.
Then, endless combinations: “like hummingbird those,” I wrote, first on a bench in the park. “Of a flap,” was written in green on the wall of a Gap. “like I a saw,” was written on an apartment building. I’ve started adding words too. “Like the wings of a hummingbird,” I wrote, in purple, on a sidewalk. And I copied things out of the dictionary: “flap: verb (used without object), to swing or sway back and forth loosely, esp. with noise. verb (used with object): to move (wings, arms, etc.) up and down.”
I told the whole story. The story you never knew, but I always wanted to tell you. I wrote it in blue on the wall of the natural history museum. “When I was a child I told them I could see the wings on a hummingbird, even when they were moving rapidly. I could see each flap separately from the others. They told me it was impossible, and I told them I saw it in everything. I saw them flap.”
And I waited. I made every combination and I’ve written it everywhere. Perhaps I’m in the wrong city. If only I knew where you are. If only you could find me, like last time. I’ve started writing to you. Perhaps you forgot the phrase. Perhaps you gave it away, so now, I’m telling our story.
On the seat of a booth in a restaurant, I wrote: “Dear Bird, Every Saturday I go to the farmers market to buy my produce. The woman from whom I usually buy tomatoes was not there today, and I decided to spend the week without tomatoes instead of betraying her by going to someone else. Do you still eat tomatoes like apples? Are tomato seeds stuck to your clothes? I saw a movie in the afternoon and the actress in it looked so much like you. She had the same haircut and color that you had before you put the bleach in yours. At night, I bought a book of poetry called “Sleeping with the Dictionary.” It sounded like the sort of thing I would be into but it was really horrible. I don’t think you would like it either. Take care. Love, Flap”
Later, on a large sports car ad above a drug store: “What I really meant when I said you had the same haircut as the actress in that movie I saw, was that everything today, reminded me of you.”
And on the other side of the world, on a rock in a desert:
“I could tell you that whenever I’m sitting in a theatre, and I’m watching a bad movie, or a movie which doesn’t engage me, I start thinking about the two hours of my life I’m wasting. Then I start thinking about the fact that I’m going to die some day. I start looking around at everyone who is staring straight ahead in the dark, and I think about the fact that everyone else in this theatre is going to die, and that we are all going to wish we’d had these two hours back. We will all wish that we’d spent them some other way; Doing something different than sitting in the dark among a crowd of silent strangers, staring straight ahead. I’ve always thought this. Every time you took me to a movie I thought I could tell you this and maybe you’d call it an existential crisis. Maybe you’d laugh. I thought I could tell you this, and pretend it had nothing to do with you.”

Fall

2006-09-26T21:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I' m walking home, I imagine that you actually took the 8 hour greyhound up here from LA to suprise me. You'd be sitting on my living room couch waiting for me, having won my housemates over with your charm. Because, of course, they've never heard of you. They'd all be excited to see how I react, and all I would say is. "Hello jello."

I think about this and I can't help but smile at the possibility. I walk in, smiling stupidly at the floor.

"What are you so happy about?" asks Christina.

"Nothing."

Los Angeles, I'm yours

2006-07-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

Someday I'd like to be able to tell my children that their father and I met on the internet.

Seeking

2006-07-17T22:11:00.000-07:00

Riding my bike to work it's either, "Fuck you get out of the road," or "Hey beautiful". I don't know which I prefer. Today I passed a big cross made out of sticks on a lawn in front of an apartment building. My squeaky and delayed brakes forced me to stop about ten feet ahead of it, so I pedaled back to look at the small, attached piece of paper. Beneath a photocopied picture of a tree about thirty feet tall it said, "May 10, 2006. They came and cut you down at 7:30am. RIP.

Before I left for Spain, my friend Scott gave me a mix cd as a going away present. I was kicking myself when, on the plane, I realized I had forgotten it. This summer I'm only just discovering it, and it's perfect for riding my bike in the sun ttowards a destination of 8 hours in air conditioning under flourescent lights. I want to tell him how much I like it but I'm afraid he'll be mad at me for forgetting it and taking so long to listen to it. (I think he's one of those people who take mix cd's very seriously.) This is the playlist:
1. Rome (wasn't built in a day)- Same Cooke
2. Me Plus One- Annie
3. Cool it Now- New Edition
4. September- Earth, Wind and Fire
5. Love Doctor- Millie Juchron
6. Another Day- Arrows (? I can't read his writing.)
7.You're all I need to Make it- Johnson Hawkins, Tatum and Durr
8. Spirit in the Death- Aretha Franklin
9. I'm going for myself now-James Carr
10.
11.Sad Tomorrows- Marvin Gaye
12.Winter's Love- Animal Collective
13.Don't Worry Babey- Beach Boys
14. Any Day Now- Elvis Presley

Other songs that I've been addicted to lately: How can I love you if you won't lie down- Silver Jews, 100,000 Fireflies- The MAgnetic Fields, Benton Harbor Blues- Fiery Furnaces

Thoracic Outlet Syndrome? Fibromyalgia? Positional Subclavian Artery Obstruction?

2006-07-09T12:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my day off. I planned to do nothing but organize some of my journals from Spain until three when my sister got off of work and I could meet her at the beach. I slept in, made myself an omelette for breakfast and fired up my laptop. I was laying facedown on the couch when I tilted my neck back. What felt like pain in a liquid form spread over the right side of my neck. I tried to sit up, but when I moved my neck back, sharp pains were sent through my shoulder and down my arm. I could feel it all the way to my fingertips. If I moved my head forward, I felt like I was being impaled by something thin and sharp through a spot directly below my right collar bone. I was home alone, and stuck to the couch. It seemed impossible to move any part of my body witihout slightly moving my neck. I managed to sit up in a position that seemed to be the least painful. I wrapped a nearby blanket around my neck as a brace to keep my head in that less painful position. I made my way to the bathroom and laid on the tile floor as the tub filled up with water. I tried to take off my clothes and only succeeded to shimmy out of my pants. I couldn't bend over to pull them over my feet so I kind of yanked them off with my toes. It hurt too much to lift my arms to take off my t-shirt, so I entered the bath like-so. No pants, and a yellow and white striped polo shirt. Floating, as I expected, was a small relief. My head kept on bobbing up the the top of the tub, which put pressure on my neck so

This is long and tedious and I'm sorry, but I'm a 21 year old trapped in a 60 year olds body.

The only meaning of Diggabumba

2006-06-27T11:41:00.000-07:00

When I was seven years old, my father showed me a photograph that he had taken in Haiti while on assignment for a magazine. It was a picture of a man with a cart piled high with white sacks of rice. The wheel had broken and the man, with muscles straining under his shiny dark skin was trying to lift it by himself. As a child I had asked, “Are those pillows?” All of the grownups laughed, as my father explained the reality of a world very different from my own. I remember feeling somewhat frightened by it all, and having the feeling for perhaps the first time that the world was a lot bigger than I thought it was.

Today, my father and I are on the 10 freeway to downtown LA. Once again, I’m grilling him for information. “Our house was just too small for so many people,” It’s 8:30 am on Christmas morning and he is explaining to me why he doesn’t know the man who is waiting for us at Union Station: the man who I’m supposed to call Uncle John. “I mean, you’d think that we would all become close. You always hear about big families who know everything about everyone. But for us, everyone was walking around between thick artificial walls, in his own imaginary room.”

I have so many questions. I knew about his eight brothers and sisters, but the reasons why I had never met any of them were always uncertain. Maybe I can ease into that question. “Is he married?”

“Well, he’s widowed,” my dad has one hand on the steering wheel and one hand up above his ear. He’s holding a small strand of hair and rubbing it in between his fingers. This is what I do when I’m nervous too.

I wait for him to elaborate on the marriage question, but I don’t think he knows any of the details. I don’t think he ever wanted to know.

“What does he do?”

“Something in a factory. Something about assembling radios.”

“What happened to his wife?”

“I think… I don’t really know. She was sick for a while.” I again wait for him to elaborate. He seems to be concentrating on the traffic, although it being Christmas morning, there is none.

“Does he have a sense of humor like you?” My dad says nothing. He doesn’t take this as a compliment. I continue. “What’s he like?”

“He’s just kind of nervous all the time.”

“Well, what makes him happy?”

“I don’t know, I think he goes hiking sometimes.”

As we drive through this unfamiliar part of the city in which I grew up, my dad seems small and unfamiliar. I think about the picture from Haiti, and feeling like my dad is an attachment to a world much bigger than myself. Not only this, but I try to remember the first time I realized that my parents didn’t know everything. Whether they make the world seem smaller or bigger, putting your parents into context, these doubtful links to world, is hard. My father once told me that when he was a kid he had trouble finding the right words to explain himself. For the things he couldn’t say he made up a word: Diggabumba. I laughed when he told me this. “Did you actually say it to people?” I had asked. “No, I never said it,” he told me. “I just used it kind of to explain things to myself. It made me feel less lost.”

We find a parking space close to the entrance of the train station. The same person who used to say nonsensical words under his breath, the photographer, the Vietnam Veteran, my Father, is visibly nervous. He turns off the ignition, looks at his watch and pauses with his hand on the door handle. This prompts me for my last question. “What are we going to do all weekend?”

Secret Messages for an Office Temp

2006-06-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

My first assignment as an office temp brought me to American Media, Inc. the company who writes Star Magazine and The National Enquirer. I had told the temp agency that I was interested in Journalism, among many other things, so here I am, sitting behind a desk covered in Tinkerbell figurines. To the right of me is a giant poster of a recent issue of Star. "Britney says 'I do'--Will Sandra Bullock be next?" imagine where I will go from here.

The reporters in the office dress in seven jeans and blazers. One woman brought a puppy to work. It chases her flip flops as she paces around the office on the phone, talking about how sweet Eva Longoria's boyfriend is. "Stop it, Stella." she says, and Stella finds something else to chase.

I've spent the day sitting by the phone and writing down messages on a purple pad of post its. I left the first post it on top and carefully peeled out the ones underneath when I needed them. I didn't want to disturb the message on it:

"Frankee
Fuck you right back".

It sounds a little crazy, and maybe I've been reading too many articles about psychic celebrities, but it seems like someone is trying to tell me something. Graffiti on a freeway yesterday angrily read "Fine, take the low road." Half way through the bikeride here I passed the words, "Watch Out!" written in green spraypaint on the sidewalk, which made me regret forgetting my helmet. Hey, I didn't want to mess up my hair for National Enquirer. "It only takes one time," my dad always warns me.

I'm sorry that this post sounds a little choppy. I've been stopping writing every couple of sentences to pick up the phone and it just plain ruins my flow. Before I get working on alphabetizing the office collection of take out menues, here are a few things I've learned today; 1. You can teach your dog how to read by showing him flashcards: "Just keep it fun, exciting and interesting so the dog will want to continue learning," it reads; 2. There is a woman in Iowa who, after closely following the Teri Shiavo case, was so afraid of growing old and being a burden to her family that she got the words, "Do not resusitate," tatooed on her chest. It's small, in simple font, right between her breasts (they had a picture). ; 3. Star magazine now actually has a section called "Knifestyles of the Rich and Famous". Each issue shows before and after pictures of celebrities who have undergone plastic surgury. According to that, Antonio Sabato Jr. has erased his face. You have to hand it to them here, they're kind of clever. Or maybe it's just that my sense of humor has dissappeared along with Cher's browline. Oh snap!

I've got two more hours here. I'm going to start counting the number of times I hear someone use the words "Botox" and "Affair".