Moojinorbit

Just so you know, I desperately want to sit down this morning and write about the weekend I spent with my 80 year-old dad. But I’m not going to plunge into it until I complete the two writing sessions I promised myself I’d do today on an academic paper. After that goal is achieved I’ll give myself permission tonight to write what we actually did together, and what went on in my head about it, and we can wonder together about why oh why parent-adult child relationships can be so hard to make sense of, much less explain.

Meanwhile, I’ve been assembling a list of details you’ll appreciate.

Hope all is well with you, my dear readers. I’ve been away for enough days to miss you! Who’s got a story to post in the comments field? Miss Marshall? 

As a reward for meeting the 8-student minimum I needed in order to earn full pay for my summer school class, I skipped the assigned reading and instead took my “Five Faces of Power” students to see Michael Moore’s new movie Sicko last night. Afterward we talked about it over dinner–or rather, I asked questions, they did some reflecting, and I kept falling into fierce (manic?) little rampages.

In retrospect, I wish I’d been a bit more disciplined, kept my mouth shut for longer periods. Most of the students shared my (mostly) approving perspective on Moore’s film and his critique of the flawed “health care” system in the U.S. anyway and could have gone on their own rampages. (Actually, a couple did.) But I was a bit triggered by one student who in my mind encapsulates a certain type that circulates in my expensive private university: the not particularly bright, legacy conservative, whose conservatism is not anchored by any particular value commitments beyond the sacred right to make money for self-centered ends without feeling guilty about it. To put it bluntly, these kids are conservative because their parents identify with conservatism, because they are business majors–which is not to say all the business majors at my school are conservative–and because they believe that untethered capitalism is The Way. I have a private acronym for the female version of these kids: DiPCoGs, or Dumb Pretty Conservative Girls. (The cultural, Christian “family values” conservatives at my school are another type altogether, but that’s a different post.) I guess the male version would be DiPCoBs.

The student, who is usually rather quiet, seemed like he’d downed a few espresso shots this time. Fired up, he kept dominating the conversation with comments along the lines of, “even though Michael Moore is pretty unAmerican and I really disagreed with his other movies, especially Farenheit 911, he had some good points in this one. But health care in Canada is not as good as he implies, and things are actually f*d up in France, and anyway the French are lazy workers, and I couldn’t believe Cuba has such nice hospitals given that they’re Communists–” and on and on. I don’t think such blathering would have bugged me that much except that his was the first voice talking when we got out of the theatre, and the main one running on at the dinner table until I started pulling others in and then went on my rampages. It was the old “Michael Moore’s a liberal, so he must be lying and biased” reaction, a reaction that pisses me off for the way that it denies conservative lies and bias, which in my mind are the great Goliath of modern political culture. American liberals in general are a much less courageous David than the biblical one. But Michael Moore is a hero of mine because, whatever else you think of him, the guy has guts. He is constantly speaking truth to power, insistently urging American citizens to live up to the ideals of participatory democracy, calling LIBERALS to account along with their conservative counterparts, and, particularly in this case, showing us that alternatives to the status quo do, contrary to popular delusion, exist.

For that reason, I just couldn’t stomach the DiPCoB outbursts. So I went on a rampage about the difference between “bias” [as in Fox News] and “critical point of view” [as in political documentary], because I don’t think most students or even most Americans understand the difference. Then I went on a rampage about the kinds of health insurance premiums these kids will be paying when they’re on their own, especially if they aren’t covered through work. (Pause for comments.) Then I talked about the many years I did not have health insurance because I couldn’t afford $350 a month on my own. (Pause for students’ personal experiences.) By now my stomach was beginning to seize up, apparently from gas brought on by a fruit smoothie I had earlier in the day, but maybe from manic dismay. And I could tell I was, well, not being as interactive in my pedagogy as I usually am. So in an attempt to stop the galloping of my own voice (and intenstines), I shifted the conversation to visions for change.

Visions for change. What do you guys think, I asked, will turn the tide on this issue? What would it take for Americans to create a system that serves all of its people in this area–the 911 rescue workers who haven’t been covered, the middle-class families going bankrupt to pay the costs of heart attacks and cancer, the poor folks literally tossed to the curb on Skid Row by the hospital itself, the people insurance companies are rejecting because of “previous conditions” such as yeast infections? Michael Moore put this on the table, showed us all kinds of alternatives that are working, even in a nation as poor and economically quarantined as Cuba, so now what?

It was this part of the conversation that kept me up last night. Almost every major social change movement across cultures and time periods has been envisioned and catalyzed by young people, the proverbial idealists, the generation that pursues what their parents and grandparents see as “impossible.” But in my experience this Generation Y (or is it Z?) struggles to locate its idealism, because kids are overwhelmed by the scope of the problems. I am overwhelmed, but I still believe we are collectively capable of great transformation, incredible change. If I did not believe that I would not be teaching classes geared to raise young people’s political consciousness and try to set it into motion.

It would thrill me to see the kids walk out of the universities and into the streets. I want them to rage and rage against the machine (hell, I want Zach from Rage to come back and start the revolution), to turn the system upside down, to call their parents’ generation to account for the selling off of their future, for the enslaving of such massive human and natural resources in service to greed. My deepest hope is that they, that we, finally rebel.

Instead, they talked about how the pharmaceutical lobbies are too powerful, how the legislators are whoring to the insurance interests (all true). How people don’t protest anymore (not true), how it doesn’t really work to protest anyway (not true). How Americans won’t pay higher taxes for health care (though we have for these wars). How we’re too work obsessed to ever support balanced lifestyles, as the French do (maybe, but look at our epidemics of anxiety and depression; do we really think this is fun?). How we’re too into “personal responsibility”–even if it’s impossible in the realm of health care, even if it kills us. How “this is just the way it is” and people aren’t going to get off their asses because we’re lazy and/or don’t think anything can change. What can we really do about it anyway, they said.

And so I gave it my best, suggesting the kind of change Americans have been capable of when no one thought it was possible (abolitionism, civil rights, women’s rights), but still I spun for a long time in bed worrying. Finally I worked on shifting my own thoughts, fleshing out my own vision

of a world where Americans turn their hugely generous volunteerism to a loving overhaul of unAmerican policies that kill and maim our own citizens while pharmaceutical and health industry executives feed off of grotesquely bloated profits (knowing, deep down, that it’s wrong)

of a world where we channel our anxiety into not just demanding change but becoming it, refusing the addiction to toxic, unrewarding lifestyles and limited comfort-seeking behaviors

of an America where it is finally dawning on us that we are driving around in vehicles of mass destruction and we begin creating more and better transportation alternatives that bring us together, make us healthier, and wake us up; where celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio are sponsoring full-length films on green technology to spur a green revolution

of health care professionals beginning to speak out against being forced to be cogs in a machine that hurts people, against participating in the banality of evil, as did the doctor in the film that confessed having essentially killed people by declining medical procedures for patients as part of her job, as did the insurance policy reviewers who volunteered to be in Moore’s movie

of a United States where citizens stop taking no for an answer and demand that we prioritize the distribution of our massive material, political, and economic resources in ways that affirm life, not just a lifestyle, that support human beings, not just bank accounts, that circulate care, not just money

of an all out rampage of equality and political nurturing, and justice–behaviors that suit a revolutionary democracy

and so on, and so on.

Top ten things I adore about Denver at this moment in mid-July, 2007. (Upon rereading, I realize this is really a list of reasons I’m happier in Denver than New York City, though some of you may think I’m nuts.)

10. Hot dry summer nights–with a frisky breeze. I love sitting on my front porch at 11:00 listening to the wind dance through the trees, in my tank top and boxers. We’re not talking humid-hot with cockroaches gnawing at your door jams, and a car alarm blasting your synapses apart for three hours with no action. No, just dry hot with a few moths and the sweetest ghosts of mountains in the air.

9. Bikeability–I can’t think of a lot of cities I’ve been in that have literally hundreds of miles of cement biking paths spidering throughout the metropolis to the outer edges. No lights, no trauma; only you and your quads and a little ambition.

8. Diverse ‘hoods–People who’ve lived in places like New York talk about Denver as if it’s all Scotch-Irish crackers. But every neighborhood I’ve lived in here has been racially and culturally diverse. From my Latino drag scene on 32nd Avenue (Sundays with the souped up SUVs busting out Ranchero music at deafening decibels, and tamales galore, and oceans of chile verde) to the buttoned up post-WWII black working-class North City Park, to 30th and Williams where the Suns of Darkness, one and only black motorcycle club, let their main man Rough House keep an eye on me, to my daily-changing Whittier neighborhood, mixed as mixed can be. Don’t listen to what the whities say; Denver is full of culturally diverse places to live in peace. Just mind your business.

7. Four, count them, four independent film compexes. New York City has the Angelica, Santa Monica has its 3rd street theatre, but we have the Mayan, the Esquire, Starz complex, and Chez Artiste (aka the “cheesy artist”). Howie Mowchovitz delivers his reviews from here straight to NPR. You can see every indie film you ever wanted to see the week it is released. Don’t take that sh*t for granted.

6. “Queen Soopers” (King Soopers market at 9th and Corona). Good Lord, what cracks in the Universe did these people crawl out of? First of all, the fact that our largest grocery chain is called King Soopers is weird to begin with, and really can’t be explained to outsiders. But at the 9th and Corona store, we’ve got every human category under the sun stumbling around under one set of flourescent lights: drag queens, welfare queens, mentally disabled (okay, koo koo for cocoa puffs), physically disabled, bad fashion, yuppie, buppie, and guppie, lesbians, elderly, and look-what-the-cat-dragged-in. I’ve never felt so at home in a supermarket.

5. I can take light rail to work in 50 minutes, and that includes the walk to the light rail station and from the station to my office. On the way, I don’t get trawled for change, hassled, raped, pillaged (at least not yet), spit on, told I have a moustache (like in NYC) or yelled at through loudspeakers in an indecipherable Staten Island accent. Also, the train doesn’t stop in the middle of a nasty underwater tunnel to stall for 40 minutes for no apparent reason while everybody staves off panic attacks–unlike the G Train in New York. That’s pretty cool. Oh, and did I mention I get to ride free through my ID card at the University?

4. Did someone say food? I mean, no one is trying to claim we’re San Franscisco, but I have not been starving for culinary delights in Denver. Aside from the occasional really, really good three-table Italian restaurant run by somebody’s aunt in a basement on the Lower East Side, I’ve been able to satiate every craving I’ve had. Great Vietnamese on Federal, random awesome Thai food in Broomfield, the killer burger at Mirepoix (thanks to Marshall), French, fusion, family Japanese, New American, soul, Chinese, pizza, even vegan–I’ve not been disappointed by what this city has become in the last decade.

3. Speaking of food: Breakfast burritos. The thing I missed most during the 6 combined years I lived in the East Coast was decent breakfasts. I don’t care what they tell you, they do not know how to do real breakfast on that side of the country. But here we’ve got these high-calorie Mexican hybrid thingies that will stuff your stomach happy for days. Eggs, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, cheese, beans, wrapped in a fresh flour tortilla and smothered with hot spicy green goodness–Is it a crime to feel good, Mami? Give me Pete’s Kitchen, Taco de Mexico, or Mama’s diner any day and I will be a giddy girl. Got a hangover? This binge is for you. Delivered by a waitress that probably kissed Jack Kerouac back in the day, and shows it.

2. This list would be incomplete without some acknowledgement of the view of the mountains. Sure, we take it for granted, we stop looking, kind of forget about it. But every once in awhile I come out of class and walk down the hallway to my office on the fourth floor, and there it appears, out the west-facing window: a breathtaking view of the Rockies, layered with snow and sunshine, forest and foothill, wave upon wave of stunning peaks rising above the lazy plains, saying “yeah, you think what you do matters, but 100, 200, 500 years from now? You punk asses wil be nothing and we’ll still be here.” Worth it.

1. God, I find myself pausing long and hard over this one. Bald eagles (which you occasionally see even from the freeway here)? The Cruise Room bar at the Oxford Hotel, where all grapefruit drinks come fresh-squeezed? The massive amounts of sunshine and blue sky we get? Relatively affordable housing (compared to other places)? The Tattered Cover Bookstore? City Park, where every Sunday in the summer is a free Jazz festival? Sure, all these things are wonderful. But I think I’m going to go with the fact that if you want to get to a bigger, “better” town, L.A. and San Francisco are a mere 2 hours flying time, and New York is just 3. So I’m going to have to go with Frontier Airlines.

Can I have my check now, Mr. Mayor?

I hear people talking about loneliness and sometimes I want to scream. I realize people experience loneliness in lots of different ways, and that all of those experiences are real, are acutely felt for them. I also realize that many souls in this world experience a kind of loneliness I can’t currently imagine–loneliness in illness, loneliness in physical paralysis, loneliness during physical torture, loneliness in the face of a child’s death, loneliness inside of intimate or committed relationships. Loneliness in a marriage. There are all kinds of loneliness we avoid discussing, because we don’t even want to let them into our consciousness for a second. We’re a culture that desperately tries to drown out loneliness with noise and consumerism and distraction.

Maybe that’s why so many people are so lonely. It’s the loneliness of having to repress and sublimate loneliness.

Still, sometimes I feel exasperated listening to coupled folks talk.

“My partner’s gone for the weekend. It’s nice, but I’m a little lonely.”

“It’s weird this week because X is visiting her sister. I get lonely. Want to do something?”

“I’ll be staying with friends, so I won’t be lonely.”

It’s like loneliness is a virus one is not supposed to catch, something not worth feeling. But, worse, like aloneness is not worth feeling, like being alone even for a few days, even for a night, is…well, just kind of sad, especially if it’s optional.

Right now the people I can relate to most about loneliness are the people who are for the moment unpartnered. I mean no offense when I say this, but I think it’s one thing to miss one’s temporarily absent partner, and another to be unpartnered with no end in sight. It’s also an experience I absolutely would not trade. I wish more people had a chance to live through it to the point that they could learn to abide with it, to find strength in it, even to make a kind of constantly negotiated peace with it. I’ve found that when I stop resenting it, wallowing in it, blaming events, people, and myself for it, this kind of loneliness can be a great gift.

Before I started posting tonight, I was sitting on my front porch on this warm summer night, plucking away at Patty Griffin on my guitar (the queen of the lonely wail), watching my neighbors come home in couples, wondering whether I could describe my loneliness when it comes. It’s hard because it has so many different faces. Tonight it’s the restless version, the part that, after coming home from a perfectly pleasant dinner with two good friends, doesn’t know what to do with the time before bed. Partnered, this would be cuddling time, or chatting about the day time, or both of us maybe taking care of minor tasks time, or just staring at something meaningless on t.v. together time. An hour or two you get to take for granted when you’re together with someone.

Alone it’s different. Yes, there’s listening to music or watching a movie or reading, which I often do. There’s getting a little more work done, which I do a lot during the school year. There’s talking to friends on the phone, which I do enough to keep current with at least a handful of folks. Cooking, cleaning, straightening up, laundry, watering the garden, writing–all things I do. I became something of a master at this during my post-doc in Ithaca when for the first time in my life I was not only lonely and missing my long-distance girlfriend, but socially isolated, particularly the first year (the year following 9/11). Every social contact I had was partnered and/or unavailable and visitors were rare. I learned to deal, to entertain myself. I taught myself to cook and to quilt, for chrissake, and I revised a book (well, at least the first round). I got well acquainted with Ally McBeal, and (thank god) Sidney Bristow. Paco the cat and I had a lot of deep conversations.

Distractions are fine and keys to survival. But I think eventually enough loneliness forces most of us, including me, to eventually just find a way to sit with it. Breathe it in, exhale it. Take a bath in it. Light candles in honor of it. Cry. Hide under the covers. Lord, I remember how hard it was to get out of bed on those icy gray mornings in Ithaca. Who was really going to care if I didn’t? (Thank God Maria and Kate finaly came along!) Why not write gloomy poetry? Stare into space. Listen to the clock tick. Think about the color green for several hours.

When I don’t let it drag me down, though, loneliness becomes a space where things eventually sprout. Awarenesses, thoughts, ideas–even an occasional epiphany. Silence stops being a thing to fear and becomes a source of richness. I always remember this after I’ve spent several days in extreme busyness or around people; I start missing the silence of being alone, and that was not true before I learned to abide loneliness. I’m not saying I have any interest in being a recluse or a hermit; I’m just not that girl. But I’ve had enough loneliness that I no longer have any interest in compromising to avoid it. I don’t want, for example, to go to a party and scam on someone I’m not going to be interested in in the morning. I’d rather be a little lonely. And this is, in the scope of my life, maybe a bit of a revolution (even though scamming was never a huge habit for me). In this round of loneliness, this last year, I have written a lot, and deepened a spiritual practice that makes a big difference in my days.

I’m laughing because in the time I’ve spent drafting this, my phone has rung half a dozen times, the cats have come in and out of the room, meowing to see what’s up, and I’ve apparently received a couple emails. Who am I to feel lonely?

Still, there’s that stillness in the back of it all. And it’s uneasy sometimes, but no longer bad.

Sorry about the strange look of the blog right now. Apparently if I want to go beyond or maintain the “transferability” of the images I have on this blog I have to start paying, which is not going to happen until next month (or the next bartending shift; whichever comes first). But paying a little is probably worth it; I can’t believe this whole operation has been free anyway.

Thanks to the generosity of a friend of Dawn & Cat’s who lives in Breckenridge, a gaggle of us got to hang out in the mountains for a couple of days this weekend. I made my first official batch of cucumber mojitos (pretty darn tasty!), boiled myself blissful in a hot tub, walked along a beautiful creek, hiked up to a high alpine lake, past multiple waterfalls, and tried to train a hyperactive black labrador to drop the frisbee. I also managed to read the book Jen leant me, Professors as Writers, and subsequently launched myself now on a new writing plan/program for my academic work, which I started yesterday. So now, god help me, I’ll be trying to keep up with the blogging and the new mountains of scholarly activity–not to mention the yoga, and the meditation, and the bicycling, and the bartending, and the babysitting, and all that. This is when it’s good to not be living with a partner.

Time management is an interesting trick to master. I was so pleased with myself yesterday because I pulled off everything I wanted to accomplish right on time. I mean, I was ON. I got up at 6, did yoga, ate, got out the door on my bike right on time. My lecture was completed in just the amount of time I’d allotted to it, and the rest of class time was perfectly paced. I did my academic writing, enjoyed the evening ride home, and took care of garden chores in a relaxed way. Totally pleased with myself.

Today, however, has been another story entirely. I woke up pretty perky at six, and then chatted on the phone with Erin as she drove herself to work. (We talked, among other things, about whether ants had hearts, which was the first thing I thought of upon waking. Erin said they might not have hearts, but you could still hurt their feelings. ) It was all good until then, but after we hung up, I made the big mistake of lounging back in bed. Next thing I knew I was trying to claw to the surface of a dream quagmire–and it was 9:00.

Cat C., if you’re reading this, I dreamt that you and Blake were living on the 22nd floor of a glass high rise, and I was taking an elevator up to your apartment, but it kept sticking at the 7th floor, and I was convinced it was going to plunge to the basement. When I finally got to the 22nd floor, I found myself in the wrong apartment, a huge penthouse that belonged to a very Yuppie couple, with views of the city so insane that I kept reeling with acrophobia. The woman was friendly enough to let me borrow her “spare” bright red flip phone to try and find you guys. When I finally wandered through the halls and found your apartment, Blake was standing naked at the marble breakfast counter with a paintbrush in his hand. Then I noticed the giant painting of Van Morrison with a snake winding around his body, looming on the living room wall.

I also dreamt, Mom, that you messaged me for an iChat and when I turned it on, you, too, were with snake. A big, fat, unnaturally green “boa constrictor” that you said you were “just babysitting for a friend.”

Sorry about all the Bessie (snake) references, Dubber. Who knows what that was all about. Is this about fertility or eeevil?

Okay, so I wrestled myself out of dream state, but not out of a massive grogginess that is still clinging to me at 11:20 a.m. I am now blogging when I have a zillion other things to do. And I realized when I opened my computer that I accidentally stood up a friend/colleague at a bar yesterday afternoon when I thought I was doing such a stellar job of time management. I’d completely convinced myself that our meeting was tomorrow, so I delayed the reminder I’d set to actually not forget the appointment. I’m an idiot. And now that I’ve f’d up half of my own day and part of a friend’s day yesterday, I’m fighting the temptation to call the entire day “derailed” and just go hide under a rock. But it’s too hot for hiding under rocks, and, besides, isn’t that where all the snakes are?

How can you sleep

when your very bed

calls in the lightning?

- Ralph H. Blum, The Rune Cards (Hagalaz: Disruption)

Marshall and I had a laugh a couple of weeks ago about the challenge of trying to abide in harmony with the Universe. She related the morning she was up at 5 meditating in the backyard when she felt something tickle her forehead. She simply noticed it and returned to center. Very Zen. Until the tickle bit her, her hand went to her forehead and came back bloody. At that point, she had to fill the garden with laughter at the ridiculous.

It’s hard to be Zen in the face of something as small as a mosquito; no wonder the rest of it is such a challenge.

This morning was the second consecutive day I did yoga first thing. There is a 6:30 yoga show on Fit TV (Comcast, channel 222) that is just enough to get the old bones going, and my back has been overtaxed lately, so stretching is key. So there I am on my yoga mat in the basement, feeling good about myself and settling into my third downward dog. I hear Rico come in through the cat door in the unfinished side. A minute later I hear his footsteps in the room, so I look over from upside down and see his happy face. With a big, fluttering blackbird in his mouth.

Screaming at 6:39 in the morning during yoga really harshes your mellow. But suffering, flapping animals in the jaws of death, in my house, have been known to make me scream. As you may recall, this happened a couple of months ago, when I had to take the baby bird to the wild bird rescue center.

What’d I do this time? I simply hustled Rico and his hapless prize back into the dark room of the basement and shut the door between us. I could hear fluttering but I realized I had a choice (thanks to practice in Breakthroughs class) and chose not to let this incident derail my desperate need for yoga.

Needless to say, my breathing for the remainder left something to be desired. As did my relaxation pose.

Then, when “class” was over, I stomped up the stairs and started pacing around the backyard and the house trying to figure out what to do. It was 7:01, but that didn’t stop me from calling about five people and railing on their voicemail about how I didn’t want to deal with the bird downstairs. What I really wanted to do was burst into tears that this shitty thing was happening to me–again. Why should I have to wake up to a life-and-death issue first thing in the morning? Why is Rico so talented that he can navigate a fluttering bird through a goddamned cat door? Why do cats have to be carnivorous? And other ridiculous objections.

Yesterday I happened to watch Oprah for the first time I’d turned in the TV in about 6 weeks. The show was on “Resilience,” and hosted folks who’d been through god-awful experiences and turned their lives around. This is probably my favorite topic in the whole world, especially if it involves a descent into heroin (which, sadly, none of these did). A woman who’d lost both her two-year-old son and her husband in a plane crash she survived made the claim that, for her, the key to getting through it was allowing herself every last feeling she had, including being pissed at God, even if well-meaning friends told her she shouldn’t.

So I think my ranting, raving, and resisting was what enabled me to finally take a deep breath, go down to the basement and open the door. There was the blackbird, actually standing, looking at me with the glazed eyes I recognized from last time as indicative of shock. In my yellow dishgloves, I dropped an old cloth over it and was able to put my hands around the body and carry it outside. Walking fast and glancing over my shoulder the whole time for Rico, I took it down the alley until I found a neighbor’s nice back yard and released it. (I know.) Amazingly, it flew off with the few tail and wing feathers Rico hadn’t plucked. Looked pretty funny, but also miraculous.

Then I stomped back home and lassoed Rico with a new bell collar I’d meant to strap on him a month ago. Who knows if it will help, but it was amusing watching him try to get away from the tinkling sound.

The quote at the top of this post kept going through my mind afterwards. How can we sleep when our bed calls in the lightning? How can we meditate with a mosquito biting our forehead? How can we be in the yoga zone when a bird is struggling for its life as a result of our cat? But then, that’s the challenge. Probably even Tibetan monks lose their cool from time to time when such things happen.

***

On other fronts, I discovered the bike route to the university, and the discovery was, as my brother would put it, “dope.” Seriously, once I get a pair of panniers and don’t have to strain my back with the backpack, I’m going to ride as often as I can. It’s safe, there’s a lot less traffic, I get to pedal through two beautiful parks, it feels good, and it probably only takes about 5 minutes more than driving once you factor in the parking and the walk from the car. It’s surprisingly easy being green(er).

Also, I realized that if I were to attempt every self-improving daily practice I’d like to try in the mornings–yoga, meditation, blog posting, generative academic writing, running, being in the silence, working on my breakthrough areas–I’d pretty much have to get up at 4 a.m. And that is not going to happen. So what do we do, rotate them?

Finally, I did not get any bartending shifts this weekend, so I won’t get to tell stories. However, my dear friend from college, Viveca (aka “Soul” to my “Wisdom,” who used to think the Joan Armatrading song went “fall like my dog” instead of “fall at my door”), is in town and will be ditching her family to hang out with me tonight. Nothing could be better. We’ll drink to the blackbird that survived.

Random notes, in no particular order…

• I enjoy writing in this blog much more than I enjoy most of the zillion other kinds of writing I have to do on a regular basis. It comes easily and I can spend hours on it without noticing. What does that say about my chosen career trajectory?

• I’m trying to severely reduce the use of my car right now. This is not just to be greener but also because I feel increasingly annoyed with driving. Even when I breathe and listen to NPR, I just find it agitating unless I’m on the open road. People don’t know how to drive. Traffic seems unnecessarily congested. It’s gross to be in an air-conditioned pod on the boulevard surrounded by nasty fumes. I find the inordinate number of SUVs in this city disgusting, arrogant, and wasteful, not to mention a source of constant frustration from the driver’s perspective in a Honda Civic. And the price of gas right now just seems a good reason to quit buying it altogether.

• So now I take the Light Rail whenever I can and I finally got the mountain bike Marce gave me tuned up and running last week. It’s been fabulously liberating. Denver is a very bike accessible city, although that theory may be tested today when I ride to and from work, which is maybe 10-15 miles south of my house through a fair amount of commuter traffic. But Saturday when I was riding over to a friend’s place, on the first real venture of my tuned up bike, Serendipity put me in the path of this crazy parade of bicyclists. These colorful folks were dressed up in circus gear, riding all kinds of bicycles, blasting music, singing, and slogging beer! It turned out to be the Tour de Fat, an event sponsored by the New Belgium Brewing Company promoting environmental sustainability. On my way home I found them again in City Park dancing to live bands and having a grand old time. Very cool. Next year I want to ride in the parade.

• What about the fact that you apparently can’t buy watermelon WITH seeds in the grocery story anymore? Grandpa and I went to King Sooper’s on Wednesday to buy food for our private July 4th feast and I noticed this. There were hundreds of watermelons for the taking, every last one of them seedless. Now, seedless is fine for those who really have Issues with watermelon seeds, worrying that their babies are going to swallow them and grow watermelons in their bellies or something. But me, I like a sweet, juicy, fatass watermelon with seeds. It’s the 4th of July, for chrissake. That’s when you sit around stuffing your face with potato salad from a carton (which we did), chewing on steak or hot dogs or burgers (which we did), and, afterwards, plowing your whole face into a watermelon wedge, then spitting out the big black seeds on the lawn (which we were effectively barred from doing). I like to spit them rapidfire like a machine gun. Besides, even if the quality of seedless watermelons has improved, I really think the melons with seeds are tastier. What’s up with a culture so obsessed with unmarred “perfection” that we can’t even tolerate seeds in our watermelon?

• Speaking of Independence Day, Grandpa and I were pretty sure that a good 80% of the pops and bangs we heard in our ghetto neighborhood that night came from actual firecrackers. We thought about joining the other 20% and shooting off her gun, but weren’t sure what bullets are capable of when you shoot them straight in the sky. With our luck we’d kill a toddler with her face stuffed in watermelon.

• I rode to the Cherry Creek Arts Festival yesterday and tracked down that artist John Harris who does the amazing paintings of water, who I posted about back in May. I told him I’d been thinking about his work for a year and hoped to actually buy a piece someday, but meanwhile I was curious about the process he uses to capture water so well. He told me all about it. So now I can make a total dork of myself trying it out in August at the painting retreat Mom’s taking me to.

• After Cherry Creek, I took the bike path all the way down to Riverfront Park to enjoy the best iced chai I’ve ever tasted from Ink! Coffee. I was so looking forward to it; had even packed two books in my CamelBak to sit and read. My mouth was practically watering when I got there (and my sits bones were sore). At that point I remembered that I’d left my wallet and all other means of accessing money at home. Bummer. So instead I wheeled down a little path nearby and found myself on a sandy beach at the edge of the South Platte river. Dirty, but pretty. Totally great until a family came down with this muppet-looking dog that wanted nothing more than to plunge in the river and try to shake off on me. All in all, I had a lovely Sunday.

• My summer school class starts today–ouch. Three weeks, three days per week, four and a half hours per session. All on facets of power. My intentions are set for us to have a great time, but I’m already looking forward to it being over. I have so loved not teaching for the last month.

My “niece” Addie (technically, my first cousin once removed) thinks I hung the moon. Her little sister Nolie has no doubt that I’m The Grim Reaper. The combination is interesting on the ego.

Last night I babysat for the two of them at their house while their parents went out. When I walked in the house I was greeted by three year-old Addie running down the stairs, jumping into my arms, looking straight into my eyes and declaring solemnly, “Aunt Nancy, I have missed you very, very much.” Then she pursed her little cherry lips and kissed me to underscore the point. I wasn’t prepared for how glorious this bounty of little girl-love would feel. I was instantly spellbound.

Nolie I was a little more prepared for, because I had given myself a pep talk of affirmative thinking in the car on the way over. “Nolie and I are going to have a great time tonight,” I reassured myself. “This is an opportunity to have a breakthrough with her and finally bond. At long last, we are going to have enough one on one time together to get on track. It will be fun.” I walked in positive, but also ready in case God’s Plan didn’t manifest right off.

When Eric brought Nolie down, though, pretty much the same thing happened that’s happened for the last eleven months of her life (which is her entire life): she took one look at me and knew for sure that Armageddon had finally arrived. The Anti-Christ had come to claim her! Oh, the screaming and crying, the utter recoil! I almost had to check the mirror to see if a warty green horn was growing out of my forehead and snakes were squirming from my hollow eye sockets. I’m not lying; every time one of her parents got her calmed down, she stole a peek at me and exploded anew.

I don’t know why this happens with Nolie (but never with Addie), and analyzing is probably fruitless. She’s never been fond of “strangers,” and even though I’ve seen a fair amount of her I can only think of once that she let me get close enough to touch her without wigging. At any rate, God’s Plan for Nolie and me [read: my agenda for God] didn’t materialize in the approximately 14 hours I spent with the girls. However, being merciful, the Divine did put Nolie under a sleeping spell about 15 minutes after I arrived when Eric put her down, and she remained conked out in her crib the whole time I was on duty. Alternately, this is simply what pure terror can do to a person.

In the morning when I woke up and joined the family in the living room, Nolie was quite surprised to find that the devil was still in the house, and even Jen finally had to admit that, yes, it does seem to be me that freaks her out more than anyone. Which doesn’t make it personal, because babies aren’t being personal when they hate you. Right.

Okay, so not sure where to go from there. More babysitting, apparently, so that Nolie can spend enough time with me awake to realize I’m not going to feed her to the coyotes or, I don’t know, hang her from the rafters for a little while–although maybe she deserves it for being so darn rude to company, to family! I’m looking forward to us getting through it because I do love the little one and always feel excited to see how she’s grown, etc. and I’m not used to family members rejecting me (well, not to my face). Thank goodness Addie’s on my team. We had a wonderful evening hanging out.

The whole being-reviled-by-an-innocent-baby thing (like babies are innocent!) brought on a memory of this horrific experience I had at sixteen. My mom probably remembers, because she is the only reason I lived through it. Our tennis club annually hosted a stop on the women’s pro tennis tour called at the time The Virginia Slims Tournament. That year I was pretty active in the whole thing, working as a ballgirl, meeting Martina and Chrissy, staring slack-jawed at Gabriela Sabatini, the unbelievablly gorgeous mooj-goddess, and wondering where all these short-haired, athletic women in the bleachers came from. Anyway, I don’t remember how I got hooked up with this afternoon gig babysitting the infant of a player on the tour. I believe the player’s name was [Something, Karen?] Valentine. The baby’s name was Little Asshole or something.

The baby girl was adorable, bubbly, and bright-eyed–until the second her mama drove off to play in her match. Then she turned into a screaming monster and did not stop blubbering and hollering for a good five hours (or what seemed like it). I wasn’t one of those teens who practically ran a babysitting corporation, but I’d successfully done it enough to believe I could handle the situation. I was dead wrong. I pretty much had to hand the hot pink possessed alien over to my mom when she came home, and Mom initially didn’t do a whole lot better, but as I recall we both walked around with her until she went slack from exhaustion. Or was it that Mom walked in with her maternal pro-powers and the baby immediately calmed down, while I went in my room and bawled? Probably the latter. At any rate, Ms. Valentine returned not long after that and Little Asshole was peacefully asleep like nothing had happened.

Clearly, this made an impact on my baby-related self-esteem or I wouldn’t remember it. I couldn’t take the pressure of feeling like maybe I didn’t have the right “maternal instincts,” wasn’t “good with children.” I remember feeling, in front of my own amazing mom, like I should have been doing a better job, proving something about the woman/mom I might someday be (my stuff, I realize). I think my mom at one point said something about the baby being able to “sense your anxiety,” which absolutely scared the crap out of me even worse. Now I had to act like the pro tennis player’s screaming baby in my arms didn’t bother me in the slightest? But the truth was that all I really wanted to do was not let one of those incredible mooj tennis players down, even if Ms. Valentine was ranked like 109th on the tour.

Ah, well. I’ve had successes since Ms. Valentine’s baby. My nephew Reilly seems to think I’m pretty cool, but maybe that’s only because I have an industrial orange flashlight and two black cats. And most days I think I don’t look like Medusa. And I really do think I’d like to have my own baby and would be pretty decent at parenting him/her. Let’s just hope I get off on a better foot than I have with Nolie.

The world looks very different from the other side of the bar.

Granted, my first night bartending a Magnolia Hotel event was largely a blur. Chris, the chief but disgruntled bartender, to whom I tried to endear myself in vain, walked off the job five minutes after I showed up. Ten minutes later the wedding guests were pouring in, mobbing the bar to take advantage of the hour that the bride’s family was buying drinks. Once my boss said the magic words, “Nancy, can you get behind the bar? That’s the father of the bride coming in and he wants to see three bartenders,” I was off and running, which meant learning everything I could by, well, just figuring it out. 

Doubtless I learned more in those 7 hours of bartending-out-my-butt than I would have in three times as much “shadowing” the real bartenders. Thank god for Shawna (also her first night at the Mag, but not at bartending) and Corey, who provided models for how to pour, what to do with the used glasses, how to run credit cards manually, and where the heck the bloody mary mix was. It was more stressful than fun at the time, but pretty cool in retrospect. Somehow the rhythm of it actually felt natural to me; watching my dad from upstairs in The Yodler all those years must have paid off. And, Lord, my legs haven’t hurt that much since I worked at the sporting goods store in high school. I’m kind of psyched to do it again.

But being on that side of the bar is a whole new perspective, and despite the madcap pace of the evening, I remember a few things. 

Everybody looks cheerful and sparkly at first, decked out in their wedding formal gear–summery floral low-cut dresses, pressed suits, hair in place. Then comes the flush of the first and second drink, before sitting down to dinner, when the guests are basking in the glow of affection for the night ahead, the newlyweds, the possibilities. People are brisk in their drink orders, but friendly, curious, making small talk. 

As they dine and begin the toasting, we work on popping three cases of champagne in the same room, quietly. Interesting challenge. We’re told that once the open bar reverts to cash after dinner, things will be mellower, and Corey will probably go over to Harry’s to work the club. Instead, dessert ends and we are instantly and consistently slammed. I have a vague memory of seeing the bride and groom dance (I remember only because it was Sade’s “By Your Side,” which I love), but other than that my horizon becomes a sea of urgent faces trolling for eye contact. I’ve been that person trying to get the bartender’s attention a million tmes, but it feels crazy when it’s ten pairs of eyes beaming for mine.

Apologies for this, but two words keep coming to mind that Natalie used to say: “Desperate Heterosexuals.” There may be no better magnet than a wedding to bring these folks to the bar, over and over, especially when the newlyweds are at most 27 years old. By the end of the night, I started to feel like I knew some of these people, and not in a good way. Talk about too much information.

There was the poor grouchy faced, hook-nosed, chubby girl in a painfully cleavage-revealing black and red dress, who ordered five Captain Morgan and cokes in the space of 90 minutes. And the willowy redhead (with the outgoing aereolae) who began her descent when she had a “misunderstanding” with the bubbly blonde bridesmaid who was grinding her hips against every man but her husband. I appreciated the aggressive Latina who managed to get three or four older men to buy her expensive cocktails while she made the most idiotic, cloying small talk. Of course, there were the half dozen increasingly drunken (and strangely tall) groomsmen throwing double Grey Goose’s and shots of Courvoisier on one another’s tabs. The twenty-three year-olds who figured out that the leftover Champagne was free were sweet, and, as you can imagine, increasingly red-lipped, sweaty, and wobbly as the night wore on.

I did not at any point have the desire to drink. It looks pretty nasty from the other side.

Definitely my favorite, though, was the frat-boy looking guy who gingerly shuffled up to me every twenty minutes and shakily asked for a tonic water with ice and lime. Then after I handed it to him, every single time, he’d say anxiously, “This is tonic water?” Poor guy, I think he was recently sober AND obsessive-compulsive. Never once tipped, but totally sweet (and dangling on the edge).

Sociologically, the wedding had some unusual aspects, like the fact that the white, Jennifer Garner-like bride was marrying a handsome African American groom–which meant the crowd was atypically mixed, but also that the dance floor was a bit of an embarrassment for the white folks. Mercy me; it was hard to watch those dripping WASP boys trying to be down when the Kanye West came on. I have to say, many white folks compensated for rhythm challenges with some serious drinking. Apparently the groom hailed from Southern California, which might explain why both the other bartenders and I were pretty sure that Erkel (the grown up one) was hanging at the bar most of the evening. Seriously, this guy was the spitting image if not the real thing.

Tipping patterns varied. It’s not true that black people tip less. It is sometimes true that drunk people tip less, but others tip excessively. Young women tipped generously. Very few older women came up to the bar, but the ones that did were obNOXious drunks, and I can’t remember if they tipped. I kind of enjoyed watching the guys who acted like they were going to tip but then pulled their dollar back when they thought I wasn’t looking. In the end, I walked home with $128 in my pocket–not bad for a wedding with three bartenders in which I was the lone fraud.

All in all, ’twas a nice wedding from what I could tell between ice plunges and soda guns and steaming glasses out of the washer. But by midnight when we stopped selling drinks I was deeply glad my hair was short enough to discourage any desperate drunk guy trying to catch a number. Shawna, the petite blonde 26 year-old (I’m guessing) was not so lucky. The girl was fending off three guys trying to get her to meet up with them–and it did not look fun. Desperate hetero boys whose buddy just dropped off the edge of the earth…not a pretty sight. Also not my problem.

I’m interested in what the next gig will bring.

By the way, for those of you familiar with my danger to any and all glassware, I only dropped one glass all night, and that was after closing when my hands were so tired they could barely grip. Suhweet.

I have so much to report since the last post. I feel like I’ve been in some kind of tornado of events and energies, some of which really merit writing about, but given other duties pressing upon me, I may have to take it in bits and pieces.

Here’s the overview:

The Baby W. post generated a huge wave of (positive) energy and information that I’m still trying to absorb.

I had my first bartending gig at The Magnolia on Saturday and it was balls-out crazy, hair-raising fun.

For some reason, many in my friendship circle are going through monumental personal and/or relationship challenges this week, so I’m getting all kinds of phone calls that trigger various existential afterthoughts for me about the twists and turns of life.

I made three–count them, three!–significant plans about spending time with my dad during the next 6 months. This might be a little bit crazy but it will darn sure be interesting.

I’ve had a new colleague staying with me for the last few days, which has been fun but also totally throwing off my routine.

Said colleague helped me plant two rose bushes and is teaching me all about orchids.

So, I think I’ll start in reverse, with the Baby W. update. First off, I learned from the last post that blogging adds a whole new meaning to “putting it out in the Universe.” That’s what I dig about it. However, per my mother’s suggestion I edited out a few identifying details for security reasons (in case there’s some shadowy hater out there reading my posts and plotting to hunt me down). I guess we should refer to the hypothetical baby as Baby W. from here forward, then, ‘kay?

In a nutshell, you guys responded with this great big “YES.” My meeting with Marce and Dawn was similarly affirmative–which is putting it mildly. That meeting is worth its own post, but I’ll for now just note that by the end of the night we were referring only half-jokingly to Baby W. as “our child.” All of which generated many consecutive hours of concentrated baby-related thoughts that made my brain swim and swoon around like a thirteen year-old with a crush on the pool lifeguard. I’m not sure what I expected but I guess I didn’t expect that. Maybe a little more caution and warning and deliberation in the face of the magnitude of the project. But in the wake of all that “Yes, you can do it! We’ll help!” the clearest feeling coming through is gratitude. You all are amazing, and I am so fortunate to already be in an incredible network of love and support. Also: who said staying close to your exes doesn’t pay off??

I don’t know if it will last, but I’m starting to get this “how could I say no in the face of all that love?” feeling. Which, of course, generates a whole new round of fear and excitement.

To get a little more concrete, just in one day the following offers came rolling in:

• free maternity clothes, baby clothes, and other material “spoiling”
• kidfrastructure sharing
• $2,000 “start up” costs up front and $100 a month for the first two years
• 1 overnight babysitting gig every three weeks
• additional babysitting and childcare
• baby shower
• help with bills and/or groceries

I’m tempted to name names here but I don’t want to embarrass anyone. Suffice it to say, the outpouring is incredible, and it gave me some very interesting images to go with the larger vision. Images of a big, crazy circle/circus of love around a very appreciated and loved child. Images of a uniquely communal childbirth environment (at least until I kick everyone out). Images of people I love getting to be part of a kid’s life in a way they might not otherwise be. Moojmothers (and maybe some moojfathers? foojfathers?) in a web of support, helping a little person to read, to play soccer, to throw a ball, to fix a toilet, to roll down a hill, to play a fiddle, to make olive tapanade, to change a tire, to be a good person, to be a citizen–all the kinds of things my brilliant, loving friends and family do.

And then there are the scary images–me stumbling around sleep deprived and brain-dead in class, feeling constantly frazzled, needing help, feeling desperately alone, wondering if I did the right thing. Worrying stuff. But maybe not any different from what any potential mother thinks about.

So from here I’m just going to take it a piece at a time. I want to secure a book contract and know that my job is not in jeopardy before I start planning any kind of insemination. But for now I’m setting some goals and doing some more preparatory exploration and we’ll see what happens.

Now for the funny part.

The day after the post, my mom and I are videoconferencing about all this, using this Mac software, iChat. She goes, “I think you should use B.T.’s sperm.” [Initials changed to protect the innocent.]

B.T. is the son of some good friend of my mom and Jim’s. I don’t think I’ve ever met the guy. I go, “oh yeah, why’s that?”

“Oh, because the T’s are just such GOOD STOCK. They’re just great people, and he’s so strapping and smart.”

“Okay, but what makes you thing B.T. has any interest in offering up his sperm?”

‘Well, because he told me so,” she says casually.

“What??? He told you so?”

“Yeah, about a year ago I asked him. And he was totally supportive; he’d even fly out there so you could have it fresh and everything. He’s totally fine with it.”

A moment of silence. I’m astounded. She just smiles. I’m thinking, okay, what does it mean that my mom’s been out there pimping sperm for me? Where in the hell do I put that information?

“Mom, I can’t believe you did that. That’s so…thoughtful. But I can’t believe you did that. Is the guy married?”

“No, he doesn’t even have a partner, but I think he’s heterosexual. He’s just supportive. And he’s really strapping! You should meet him!”

Deep breath. This is already a crazy, crazy ride.