This morning, just before I woke, I dreamt I was trying on clothes in some kind of store. I was talking with the salesman, who was fussing over me a bit and not really listening. He put something over my head that reminds me of the kind of clothes the Three Musketeers wear, but a bit looser, and definitely meant for a man.

I said something that started with a 'p' - I think I said I was a pilgrim, or that I was passing through.

"I'm just looking for some shelter," I said, and the words caught in my throat at the end. I don't remember if there was a storm outside but I know those words became a plea, and that they went far beyond the scene. I woke up sobbing.

Sometimes I feel like St. Patricia, preaching the gospel of academic writing to the unsure masses.

Yea verily, the thesis is a strong and mighty force that guides your paper from the beginning to its righteous end. It is complete and perfect unto itself: it has a beginning, which involves the topic at hand; it has a middle, which tells the reader your stand or interpretation; and it must tell the audience the reasons you reached your conclusion. The thesis is honed in the fires of logic and knowledge, and with it you may defend your thoughts against all who would stand against you.

And yea, the thesis shall beget your paragraphs and topic sentences, each in turn. ( Read more... )

"I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.

So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.

What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

And all music is."

-- Preface, Breakfast of Champions

Armistice Day it is, Mr. Vonnegut.  The world is too much with us to throw away sacred things.

It's Sunday morning, and Edie is dead.  I knew that she eventually would be, given that her 80th birthday just passed, but it seemed as far away as ever.  As an old spitfire, she knew how to plummet toward oblivion and bounce back up like Joe Palooka doll.  (When was the last time we made one of those?  If I asked my students what a Joe Palooka doll was, would any of them know, or would they have to reach for Google?  That's okay.  Edie would know.)  She managed all kinds of trouble with general aplomb, moving from hospital to home for the last few years with such alacrity that it was difficult to keep up. 

She wanted to be home with her things, and her teddy bears, and her freedom.  There were a number of reasons that my heart went out to her and that we considered her family, and her insistence on self-reliance, though difficult, was one of them.  I understood, finally and more than ever, why the elderly often insist on doing everything for themselves, even when they can't anymore.  When you spend a lifetime of being able to do the largest and smallest things, not just for yourself but for others, you cannot bear to be anything but competent.  You want and need control of your life.  It is a fearful thing to be put in the hands of others.  Edie feared convalescent homes because being in one would mean she would likely never walk free again.

And for a while, Edie was very open about her fear of death.  ( Read more... )

I wonder if real-world excavation sites are anything like spring cleaning (notwithstanding the fact that it's autumn).  First, you decide on a place to start - a closet, a drawer, a crypt, a mound.  Today, I started in a drawer that was only half full at any given time with bric-a-brac instead of clothes.  You clear the early debris: bits and bobs, clothes that no longer fit, the first layers of sediment.  Then your task expands to nearby sites, in my case, other drawers and closets and finally the rest of the room.  And then, as you dig, the piles start to form.  There are things that can be thrown out, things that need to be reshuffled, and things that appear to have come from some other place.

Occasionally, you strike gold.  Maybe it's a sweater you loved but packed away for the summer.  Or maybe it's something that looks like trash but is something you treasure, like shards of sea shells taken from a lovely beach trip, or a movie ticket stub so worn away that only the title of the film remains visible in ghostly ink.  Joe Dirt wasn't a film I'd planned to see, let alone to like, but it was the film Nathan and I chose to hide behind in our earliest attempts to be alone in the dark.  That waxy gray ticket might as well have been a holy writ for the reverence I felt when I held it, and it might as well have been a strip of thousand year old parchment for the delicate way I moved it to another location.

( Read more... )

These words floated back to me today on a wave of free association, apropos of nothing, and slapped me in the face with all of my own suffering. 

Now being without you
Takes a lot of getting used to
Should learn to live with it
But I don't want to
Being without you
Is all a big mistake
Instead of getting easier
It's the hardest thing to take
-- Chicago, Hard Habit to Break

The rest of the song doesn't apply, but it doesn't have to.

I used to wish that I was a poet, but maybe I should've wanted to be a songwriter.  They're the poets that are remembered the most and with surprising fidelity.  Maybe the music makes all the difference.  Other poets are just spinning words out into silence. 

I think I stopped writing poetry because I found a well of silence in me that went deeper than my well of words.  So deep, in fact, that I have learned to fear the bottom that I have no desire to find.  ( Read more... )

I assume my grandparents gave me toys as gifts when I was very young. I have pictures, anyway, with mounds of offerings to the tiny goddess that was me. Some of them had to have been from Grandpa and Grandma, since at that age, I spoke the language of toys quite fluently.  (I hated baby dolls my whole life; I never knew what to do with them or why they would be fun.  But I loved me some Barbie dolls, if only because they became tiny avatars for my stories and adventures.  Shipwrecked, divorced, separated at birth - my Barbies were never dull.  But I digress.) 

After a while (and I'm not sure when), my grandmother started giving me money for my birthday and Christmas. She was so cute about it - like a little elf, she would tip-toe up to me with a smile and press a roll of bills into my hand.  I always hugged her and thanked her because she was speaking to me in a language I had come to understand.  I knew my grandparents didn't make much but my grandma never failed to give me the means to buy something I liked for myself.  It didn't matter how much or how little she gave; it really was the thought that counted.  I could add her money to other Christmas gifts if I wanted something a bit more expensive, anyway.  (When you're the child of a single parent, you learn to save pretty early.)  And my grandmother never assumed she would know what I wanted, so I never got something from her that ended up in the back of a closet, or in a trip back to the store.  I knew that each of those green bills came straight from her simple, loving heart.

( Read more... )

Last night I dreamt that I was graduating from Cal State L.A., in a setting that was supposed to represent the school but was the weird mish-mash of dreams. Only the graduate candidates and their families were in attendance; it was a much smaller gathering than the one I actually had last year. The ceremony was indoors, in a space that was a somber blend of lecture hall and church. It even had the raised side pulpit that you have to step up into. I remember that most of the people were in black, but not the way that you typically associate with graduation - not black robes, but black clothes, like at a funeral. And people were invited to get up and share their memories, as they would be when celebrating the dead.

I got up and started talking. What I delivered something between a valedictorian address and a eulogy. My eyes were reddening. I think I had a tissue I was twisting in my hands. I wanted to lament it outright: "What am I supposed to do when all of this is gone? What am I supposed to *be*?" and I got close, but then the microphone cut out on me. The staff was shooing me off the stage so they could wrap up the service. The other people up there with me moved like they thought I should be allowed to finish, but no one was going to rock the boat. I was so choked up with tears that I couldn't be heard without the mic.

( Read more... )

You know the only word for it is "mistake," what you've done.  Because you didn't mean to betray.  There was no malice.  There was just...tailspin.

You say you're sorry again though he isn't here to hear, though it won't fix anything.  But you're listening to your own broken voice again.  Not just broken like a record repeating, but broken like a woman's wailing.  There's no way to keep it in, the sadness or the sincerity, so strong it wrings your soul in your chest.  Like a recurring condition, you know this bout will pass, but for the moment it seems to stretch into eternity.

( Read more... )

There is no way for anyone else to save me from myself and there never has been. No parent, no church, no law or lover can do it for me, particularly when they try. The eternal lament of the parent is that they can't keep their children from making their mistakes. They have to have faith that their kids will choose differently, when facing the same options.

It can happen, I tell you. I am living proof. But I am also living proof that some grooves are scratched too deeply into the record - I ended up doing things I thought I would never do, being like my parents in small insidious ways. (Not the worst ways, please God. Let me be myself in the worst ways.)

What no one seems to want to say, like it's some shameful secret, is that being an adult isn't just about making the best decisions. It's also about learning to handle your weaknesses and vices wisely, so you can acknowledge your nature without bankrupting your life. We were never meant to simply sow and reap only the good. We are in denial about the need to destroy as well as build, and so it gets blown out of all proportion.

( Read more... )

It was 1987, and I was a girl.

Sometimes it feels like it's still 1987 somewhere, and I'm still a girl falling in love with Patrick Swayze, like every other female I knew.  Young or old, it didn't seem to matter - the man could move.  He had a grace that was hard to match; most men had no chance, and most women envied his flow and charm.  And why not?  He had more charisma in one finger than many of us feel in our entire bodies.

I remember watching his body before I could want it in a sexual way.  It was a symbol I could only partially decipher, but it was a symbol I loved because it was so free - and I wasn't.  1987 was one of the darkest years of my life, a year when I was trapped on all sides, like an animal cornered by a pack that's closing in.  I watched him the way a zoo creature might admire a ballet dancer springing on the other side of its cage (and Patrick was a ballet dancer, always).  I watched him with my heart in my eyes and a hunger in my heart.  Someday that hunger would have a name.

In a way, Patrick Swayze represented everything the men around me were supposed to be but never were; he was brave, true, strong, and fair.  From what I heard over the years, he wasn't those things just on screen.  He really was Prince Charming.  And he charmed me, or maybe he imprinted himself deeply on me during those terrible formative years. 

Patrick Swayze made everyone want to dance.  And we did dance, we danced like fools, my old friends and I.  We danced like no one was watching, we danced like we had everything to be happy about (and in those moments, we did) and we dreamed.  Perhaps that is the most important part.  Patrick Swayze breathed and touched and twirled and swiveled his way through the landscapes of our minds, where he wasn't just a simple daydream.  He was the embodiment of all that we wanted: talent, determination, loyalty, and love.  A lot to live up to.

It is his lasting legacy that he did live up to those dreams, and in return, he will remain at his best in the depths of our collective subconscious.  He will dance forever with us in our memories and dreams, which are where the best parts of our lives are stored.  For me, it's the least I can offer a man who gave me a reason to dance when I needed it most.

I miss finding notes in your handwriting around the house.
I miss tripping over your shoes.
I miss kisses in the morning when I'm not even half-awake.
I miss cooking for you.
I miss watching a movie and talking about it for hours.
I miss holding you.
I miss walking with you in the cool of the evening.
I miss seeing you (every day).
I miss the scent of you in the closets and in the bathroom after the ritual application of aftershave.
I miss feeling as though I had never seriously hurt you.  Annoyed, yes.  Wounded?  No.
I miss all of this and more, so much.
Still.

I found this, undated, in a notebook I carried around for a while:

"Saw an old couple cross the street today. She took his arm to guide him like a schoolteacher taking a child's hand - stronger, the one in charge. And I thought, 'The future is all around us.' In the elderly, losing teeth and counting pills, walking with a shuffle or a limp or a cane. So better drink up today. Toss back an extra. Eat what you want. Fuck while you can. Because we know what the future will look like."

Inglourious Basterds is not history, nor is it meant to be historically accurate.  Inglourious Basterds uses history as a setting and a story with which we are all too familiar, and it twists it in a way many of us have thought of, if only for a moment.  The old hypothetical question about going back in time and choosing to kill Hitler before his recorded end - Tarantino's taking on that question, and anyone familiar with his work knows what the answer is going to be.

( Read more... )

Can crying in your dreams give you the catharsis you need in the waking world?

I dreamt of my second mother for the first time in a while and after a while I seemed to understand that she was dead. Instead of understanding that she was dead in the waking world, which I did in a near-lucid dream years ago, I understood she was dead in the dreaming reality I was in.  She was watching over us kids as always.  I got to sit down with her and talk while she was organizing something in a bedroom.  At one point, I saw her with her hair in those cute golden pigtails she'd sometimes do.  At the end of the dream, we were at a concert, and she was up on stage in colored lights.  She looked different then; another woman's image was meant to represent her.  She looked out at me and disappeared slowly, and I heard the disappointment in my own voice when I called out, "No!"

I woke up knowing I'd cried a good bit in my dream.  It's weird, but I kind of feel better for it. 

I still miss Gayle and want to make her proud of me.

Years go by and that doesn't change.

I have a certain pathetic urge right now to be immune to other people's power to hurt me, either on purpose or by accident.  ( Read more... )

Forest Lawn Cemetery sprawls across a prominent hill in Glendale, California, my home town.  It is a swath of lovely green on a map, as Google will easily show you, but the experience of the place isn't to be found on the internet.  Behind elegant brick walls and tall black gates, the entryway has a complex of quaint buildings to the right and a park to the left.  The park has no graves, just a few scattered statues, and for many years it had a serene lake with a fountain that sent streams cascading into the air year round.  There were a number of trees and bushes clustering near the lake, and there was usually a section of beautiful wild green fenced off far to the left. 

A little ways up the hillside, the grave markers start discreetly making up organized rows that climb as far as the eye can see.  Steep grades keep you from seeing how large Forest Lawn actually is; it is a driver's cemetery and requires a car to truly explore, unless you're in for quite a workout.  Far to the right, through a narrow alleyway, is a section with bona fide tombstones, grave art, and upright grave markers.  I believe some mausoleums are there, too.  In the back of my mind, I've always felt that cemeteries should have prominent gravestones, and while most graves have small markers, Forest Lawn does not disappoint.  A good deal of art is scattered throughout, including stately reproductions of Michaelangelo.  There is a museum housing awe-inspiring, gigantic renditions of the Crucifixion and Resurrection in paint.  Another museum is housed in a white building that crowns the whole cemetery (and, indeed, crowns Glendale).  From its height, a cross glows nightly.  Forest Lawn is the reason that Glendale has more dead bodies in it than living ones, and such has been the case for many years.

( Read more... )

Last night, I dreamt that I returned to my first apartment on Jackson Street with my mother in tow.  It was the same little studio, but it was full of stuff that I'd left behind, the way that many kids leave things behind in their old rooms when their parents own their own houses.  It was a glorified storage space, waiting for me to go through it, box by box.  And it was time for me to clean it out entirely.

Walking into the building, the floors and staircases were arranged strangely.  Every time I've dreamt of that place, the staircases have been at crazy angles, or without handrails and leading up several stories without a way to get to floors in between.  And entering my old place, the old black security door was still there.  

I immediately looked around and felt a little overwhelmed by the task.  ( Read more... )

The other day, while watching Nightmare on Elm Street, I caught a detail that hadn't stood out to me before.  And it's not like I haven't watched the movie a thousand times since I was a kid (and it's not like I haven't noticed new details each time), but something gave me pause that wouldn't have occurred to me when it first came out.  And that's because the movie sounds like the 1980s, synthesizers and all. 

When the music swells as Freddie is chasing a yet another hapless teenager, it's pure 80s, and I remember when that style was the sound of reality itself.  In the grocery stores, at the movies, on the radio - the same instruments and rhythms formed the backdrop of every day for my earliest decade.  I don't have to suspend my disbelief much when I hear such tunes; I accept the milieu as plausible and right because I was a small part of it.  I escaped my own monsters, however temporarily, through the music and movies of the 80s.

I've heard younger viewers say that 80's movies are hokey and bad (and in some cases they're certainly right), but now I wonder how much of that is due to sound.  ( Read more... )

A friend joined me for the first of many horror movies I watched this week, and it was one he'd only seen in bits and pieces: Hellraiser.  And since I love sharing my favorites with the uninitiated, I was all excited to watch his reactions as much as the film itself - and that was when I noticed that one of the main characters continually drew him out of the movie's spell.  He kept commenting on the way she looked, and I don't mean the expressions on her face.  He couldn't understand how she was supposed to be a main object of desire with her carefully set, shorter red hair, her dark glasses, and her business suits and heels.  Whereas I instinctively understood that she was meant to be a grown woman with an attractive remove and a sleek image because such a style was popular when I was a child. 

( Read more... )